WEBVTT NOTE Classical-Liberal Roots of Marxist Class Analysis 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.160 I'm going to be talking about class conflict, classes and class conflict, in Marxism and in classical liberalism. 2 00:00:09.160 --> 00:00:19.400 And it's clear enough that there are a few ideas that are as closely connected with Marxism as the idea of classes and class conflict. 3 00:00:19.400 --> 00:00:25.400 Take that away from Marxism and it's hard to see how you would have a Marxist philosophy of history, 4 00:00:25.400 --> 00:00:31.640 Hard to see how you would have some any Marxist theory of revolution. 5 00:00:31.640 --> 00:00:40.120 Yet, as with so much in Marxism, when it comes to dealing with classes and class conflict, 6 00:00:40.120 --> 00:00:48.800 we are faced in the corpus of Marxist writings with ambiguity and contradiction. 7 00:00:48.800 --> 00:00:53.440 These are perhaps the most famous lines that Marx ever wrote. 8 00:00:53.440 --> 00:01:01.440 The history from the Communist Manifesto, the history of all hitherto existing society, is the history of class struggles. 9 00:01:01.440 --> 00:01:04.440 Freeman and slave, listen to these pairs, 10 00:01:04.440 --> 00:01:08.440 Freeman and slave, Patrician and plebeian, 11 00:01:08.440 --> 00:01:18.440 Lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another. 12 00:01:18.440 --> 00:01:27.940 Now, one thing that's clear from these contrasting pairs is that we're dealing, if we're dealing with classes, we are not dealing with classes in an economic sense, 13 00:01:27.940 --> 00:01:34.640 because most of those categories are legal categories. Take, for instance, freemen and slave. 14 00:01:34.640 --> 00:01:42.440 Not categories having to do with the process of production, but categories that are set up through some kind of legal definition. 15 00:01:42.440 --> 00:01:53.440 In other words, there were classes, not in an economic sense, primarily, but classes primarily in a legal and political sense, what used to in Europe be called a states, a ta, or a stenda. 16 00:01:53.440 --> 00:02:02.440 In 1927, 79 years after the publication of the manifesto, a prominent socialist theoretician, Karl Kautsky, noticed this fact. 17 00:02:02.440 --> 00:02:09.440 Okay, so that's one thing that Marx says about classes. Here's another thing. And this comes not at the beginning, but towards the end of his career. 18 00:02:09.440 --> 00:02:21.440 In the third and last volume of Capital, published posthumously in 1894, the last chapter of the third volume of Capital is entitled Classes. 19 00:02:21.440 --> 00:02:27.440 Here, Marx states, the first question to be answered is this, what constitutes a class? 20 00:02:27.440 --> 00:02:36.440 Okay, finally getting down to it. At first glance, he says, it would seem to be the identity of revenue and sources of revenue. 21 00:02:36.440 --> 00:02:59.440 But this, he says, is inadequate, because from this standpoint, physicians and officials would also form two classes, and distinct classes would be yielded by, as he says, the infinite fragmentation of interest and rank into which the division of social labor splits laborers as well as capitalists and landlords. 22 00:02:59.440 --> 00:03:08.440 The latter, for instance, into owners of vineyards, that would be a different class, farm owners would be a different class, owners of forests a different class, and so on. 23 00:03:08.440 --> 00:03:14.440 At this point, there's a note by Engels, here the manuscript breaks off. 24 00:03:14.440 --> 00:03:24.440 Now, as Mises used to say, it's not that Marx fell dead over the manuscript, you know, shot through the window or something. 25 00:03:24.440 --> 00:03:37.440 He lived another 15 years, and yet there is nothing more concise or consistent, more unambiguous that he ever writes about classes. 26 00:03:37.440 --> 00:03:51.440 So, whatever the debate about the defects of the Marxist view of classes, we are faced with this as a tool, a possible tool of social analysis. 27 00:03:51.440 --> 00:03:59.440 Some idea of classes, some idea of class conflict, intelligent people find that interesting, attractive. 28 00:03:59.440 --> 00:04:08.440 They have the sense, I think, that if you talk about conflicting classes and conflicting interests of classes, 29 00:04:08.440 --> 00:04:14.440 there's perhaps more truth in that than there is on the editorial page of the New York Times, 30 00:04:14.440 --> 00:04:19.440 you know, where everything is harmonious in society and everybody wants the good of everybody else. 31 00:04:19.440 --> 00:04:27.080 leaders favor what's good for everyone, so people have a sense well with this 32 00:04:27.080 --> 00:04:31.720 idea of classes you're getting perhaps to a more basic, you're unveiling some 33 00:04:31.720 --> 00:04:38.120 kind of secret about society that has a tang of truth and reality about it, and 34 00:04:38.120 --> 00:04:45.120 this is true, but what my thesis this morning is that we can have a theory of 35 00:04:45.120 --> 00:04:49.240 classes, we can have a theory of class conflict, but one that has nothing to do 36 00:04:49.240 --> 00:04:56.120 with Marx, one that in fact, antedated Marx, because the fact of the matter is that there 37 00:04:56.120 --> 00:05:01.640 was a theory of class conflict developed by classical liberals before Marxism and on which 38 00:05:01.640 --> 00:05:10.480 Marx himself drew. Now, I'm using this blackboard because there will be a number of probably 39 00:05:10.480 --> 00:05:20.480 and the unfamiliar names I'm going to be using in the course of this morning. 40 00:05:20.480 --> 00:05:25.480 I'm not sure whether you'll be able to see this too well. 41 00:05:25.480 --> 00:05:28.480 Can't see it at all? I'm sorry, but perhaps other people... 42 00:05:28.480 --> 00:05:32.480 Can you see this at all? So the first row sees it. 43 00:05:32.480 --> 00:05:38.480 We have different classes here too. 44 00:05:38.480 --> 00:05:47.480 I'll spell this out, Blanqui, B-L-A-N-Q-U-I, Adolf Blanqui was a protégé of Jean-Baptiste 45 00:05:47.480 --> 00:05:54.840 Say, S-A-Y, and succeeded him as professor of political economy at a prestigious school 46 00:05:54.840 --> 00:05:56.840 in Paris. 47 00:05:56.840 --> 00:06:01.280 In what was probably the first history of economic thought, in 1837, 11 years before 48 00:06:01.280 --> 00:06:06.280 the Communist Manifesto, this is what Blanqui says, in all the revolutions there have been 49 00:06:06.280 --> 00:06:08.280 The Theory of Money and Credit 50 00:06:36.280 --> 00:06:41.120 from between these groups he says so in one country the fruit of labor is taken 51 00:06:41.120 --> 00:06:46.600 from the workmen by taxes under pretense of the welfare of the state in another by 52 00:06:46.600 --> 00:06:50.920 privileges declaring labor a royal concession and making one pay dearly for 53 00:06:50.920 --> 00:06:55.160 the right to devote himself to it the same abuse is reproduced under forms more 54 00:06:55.160 --> 00:07:00.400 indirect but not less oppressive when by means of customs duties the state shares 55 00:07:00.400 --> 00:07:04.760 with the privileged industries the benefits of the taxes imposed on non 56 00:07:04.760 --> 00:07:07.760 Unprivileged Classes 57 00:07:07.760 --> 00:07:10.760 But this is not something that was invented by Blanqui. 58 00:07:10.760 --> 00:07:17.760 The idea of classes and class conflict in this sense was by his time, and certainly by Marx's time, a common place. 59 00:07:17.760 --> 00:07:21.760 It was virtually a cliché of social science. 60 00:07:21.760 --> 00:07:28.760 Marx and Engels were well aware of the existence of this earlier classical liberal idea of class conflicts. 61 00:07:28.760 --> 00:07:30.960 Marx himself said in a letter, 62 00:07:30.960 --> 00:07:32.680 No credit is due to me 63 00:07:32.680 --> 00:07:37.160 for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. 64 00:07:37.160 --> 00:07:39.800 Long before me, bourgeois historians 65 00:07:39.800 --> 00:07:41.880 had described the historical development 66 00:07:41.880 --> 00:07:44.280 of this class struggle. 67 00:07:44.280 --> 00:07:48.440 The two most important of the bourgeois historians that he mentions are 68 00:07:48.440 --> 00:07:52.920 Augustin Thierry, T-H-I-E-R-R-Y 69 00:07:52.920 --> 00:07:56.360 and Francois Guizot, 70 00:07:56.360 --> 00:08:00.160 GUIZOT 71 00:08:00.160 --> 00:08:03.320 Let me just stop a second. 72 00:08:03.320 --> 00:08:05.120 I'm going to be mentioning other names. 73 00:08:05.120 --> 00:08:09.280 I have on the board Comte, Charles Comte, Charles de Noyer. 74 00:08:09.280 --> 00:08:14.400 And it might strike you, how come I've never heard of these people? 75 00:08:14.400 --> 00:08:16.040 Good question. 76 00:08:16.040 --> 00:08:21.600 What this reminds me of is what Florian Aftalion, a free market economist in Paris, 77 00:08:21.600 --> 00:08:25.600 said in his introduction to the works of Bastiat. 78 00:08:25.600 --> 00:08:55.600 He says Bastiat's name is unknown in France now and it's really rather strange that those like Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle and many others who preached the coming demise of capitalism, the immiseration of the working class, who were wrong, who were totally wrong in their predictions regarding the course of modern history, they are people whom undergraduates in America and Europe have to write term papers about every semester of their year in college. 79 00:08:55.600 --> 00:09:06.600 And these other people like Bastiat and the people that I'm mentioning here, whose names you do not know, and whose names were not mentioned to you by your professors, were the ones who turned out to be right. 80 00:09:06.600 --> 00:09:15.600 Were the ones who turned out to be right. So please bear with me if I come up with people who you might consider a little obscure. 81 00:09:15.600 --> 00:09:36.100 The reason I'm delving into this is that, as I feel, they certainly were much more correct in their analysis of social reality than the Marxists, Gramsci, Lukács, Gramsci's mother-in-law, all the people on whom dissertations are being written every day of the year. 82 00:09:36.100 --> 00:09:46.100 So Marx and Engels both conceded that they had drawn their idea of the class struggle from a previous generation of bourgeois historians in France. 83 00:09:46.100 --> 00:09:54.100 And this was something that was talked about by the writers of the Second International, like Plakhanov and Lenin and so on. 84 00:09:54.100 --> 00:09:58.100 They talked about this bourgeois or classical liberal background of Marxism. 85 00:09:58.100 --> 00:10:03.100 Nowadays, if you look up John Elster's book, for instance, Thierry's name doesn't appear. 86 00:10:33.100 --> 00:10:37.820 We have to go back to this period of the French Restoration and deal with Charles Comte, Charles 87 00:10:37.820 --> 00:10:45.260 Du Noyer, two young intellectuals who founded a publication called the Censeur, the European 88 00:10:45.260 --> 00:10:54.020 Censor, European, European Censor, not in the sense of censoring publications because they 89 00:10:54.020 --> 00:10:58.720 themselves went to jail on behalf of their views because of the censorship at the time, 90 00:10:58.720 --> 00:11:21.720 The Theory, who at that time was just about 20 years old, joined them. Together, in this magazine, for just a period of two years, from 1817 to 1819, they developed one of the most radical versions of classical liberal thought. 91 00:11:21.720 --> 00:11:31.720 and this version of the classical liberal position then had repercussions in the liberal tradition up to Herbert Spencer, beyond Herbert Spencer 92 00:11:31.720 --> 00:11:40.720 and also had its effect on Marxism through Henri de Saint-Simon who was associated with them for a brief period when he was a liberal 93 00:11:40.720 --> 00:11:47.720 and then also through other channels through Marxism. So their views became very powerful and very influential. 94 00:11:47.720 --> 00:11:54.220 There were many sources of their position, nobody, very few people invent things, there were sources. 95 00:11:54.220 --> 00:12:04.220 Tracy, as in Dick Tracy, except this is destitute to Tracy, destitute to Tracy, was an important source. 96 00:12:04.220 --> 00:12:10.920 It's a French philosopher and economist whose treatise on political economy, his friend Thomas Jefferson, 97 00:12:10.920 --> 00:12:15.920 arranged to have translated and published in America before it was published in France. 98 00:12:15.920 --> 00:12:20.080 This is what Trasi says. His definition of society is crucial. 99 00:12:20.080 --> 00:12:26.160 Society is purely and solely a continual series of exchanges. 100 00:12:26.160 --> 00:12:29.600 It is never anything else in any epoch of its duration. 101 00:12:29.600 --> 00:12:34.400 And this is the greatest eulogy we can give to it, for exchange is an admirable transaction. 102 00:12:34.400 --> 00:12:40.000 Contract parties always both gain. Consequently, society is an uninterrupted succession of 103 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:54.000 of Advantages, Unceasingly Renewed for All Its Members. Society is an unceasing series of exchanges both in material wealth and in immaterial wealth. 104 00:12:54.000 --> 00:13:09.000 Comte de Noyer et Thierry were members of Tracy Salon, that is, he and his wife had a sort of years before the circle Bastiat conducted in Paris a gathering for young intellectuals. 105 00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:28.000 Another influence was Benjamin Constant, great French liberal and really great theoretician in general who made the distinction between what modern civilization is like and how that is distinguished from ancient Greece and Rome. 106 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:32.000 So let's stop talking all the time about what was fitting for ancient Greece and Rome. 107 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:35.800 in Rome. And let's stop bringing up Plato as a model, let's stop talking about 108 00:13:35.800 --> 00:13:40.360 Aristotelian politics, the polis and community and so on, because we live in a 109 00:13:40.360 --> 00:13:45.920 totally different world. Okay, and other sources as well, but the chief 110 00:13:45.920 --> 00:13:52.040 intellectual source of this movement that this magazine, the censure, is going 111 00:13:52.040 --> 00:13:58.480 to be pushing was doubtless Jean-Baptiste Say, who's the second edition of whose 112 00:13:58.480 --> 00:14:05.960 was a treaty of political economy, came out in 1814, just at the time, and 1817, the third edition, just at the time that these people, 113 00:14:05.960 --> 00:14:15.560 Danouaille and Comte and Thierry, are looking for new ideas. These young intellectuals were again participants in Say's salon, 114 00:14:15.560 --> 00:14:25.120 and Comte, Charles Comte, became the son-in-law of Say. Jean-Baptiste Say held that wealth is comprised of what has value, 115 00:14:25.120 --> 00:14:31.600 and what has value that is based on utility. This is what he says, different 116 00:14:31.600 --> 00:14:36.040 ways of producing all consist in taking a product in one state and putting it 117 00:14:36.040 --> 00:14:41.440 into another state or condition in which it has more utility and value in one way 118 00:14:41.440 --> 00:14:44.560 or another from the moment that one creates or augments the utility of 119 00:14:44.560 --> 00:14:50.800 things one augments their value one is exercising an industry and one is 120 00:14:50.800 --> 00:14:55.760 Producing Wealth. All those members of society, and this is that's the end of 121 00:14:55.760 --> 00:15:00.180 his quotation, his position was that all those members of society who contribute 122 00:15:00.180 --> 00:15:06.660 to the creation of values are productive members of society. And he put in at the 123 00:15:06.660 --> 00:15:11.140 head of all of this the entrepreneur. Say was one of the first to realize the 124 00:15:11.140 --> 00:15:15.520 boundless possibilities of a free economy, unlike the English economists at 125 00:15:15.520 --> 00:15:20.440 the time, with the pessimistic tone that obtains in Ricardo and especially 126 00:15:20.440 --> 00:15:45.440 The Productive Power of Industry is limited only by the ignorance and the bad administration of states. Spread enlightenment and improve governments, or rather prevent them from doing harm, and there will be no limit that can be assigned to the multiplication of wealth. 127 00:15:45.440 --> 00:15:57.440 You see, the central insight, we are in a different world now. There is no limit. We have discovered the genie has come out of the bottle. We have discovered Aladdin's lamp. 128 00:15:57.440 --> 00:16:02.440 And that is the productive forces of free competitive capitalism. 129 00:16:02.440 --> 00:16:09.440 According to Say, however, there are categories of people who consume wealth rather than produce it. 130 00:16:09.440 --> 00:16:18.440 He identified these unproductive classes. They were the reactionary classes, the army, the government, and the state-supported clergy. 131 00:16:18.440 --> 00:16:29.440 He also recognized, however, that members of the industrious class, entrepreneurs and capitalists and merchants, can sometimes act as exploiters. 132 00:16:29.440 --> 00:16:34.440 And that is when they go to the state for special privileges. 133 00:16:34.440 --> 00:16:38.920 And there are quotations that could be brought up from Say on that. 134 00:16:38.920 --> 00:16:43.720 That is, on the one hand, he recognizes that there exist these old reactionary classes 135 00:16:43.720 --> 00:16:50.360 that live off the wealth produced by the creative classes. 136 00:16:50.360 --> 00:16:58.760 People in the bloated army establishments, the state-supported priests, the state functionaries in general. 137 00:16:58.760 --> 00:17:05.160 However, there are even people who appear to be industrious, who appear to be entrepreneurs. 138 00:17:05.160 --> 00:17:10.040 When the point comes that they go over and snatch away privileges from the state, 139 00:17:10.040 --> 00:17:15.320 they can be said to have passed into the category of the unproductive and the exploiting. 140 00:17:17.000 --> 00:17:23.160 The achievement of Charles Comte of De Noyer and Thierry in their Censeurs or Opéennes was to have 141 00:17:23.160 --> 00:17:31.160 to have taken the idea of Say and the other writers and to have made that into a militant political creed. 142 00:17:32.160 --> 00:17:38.160 They call this creed industrialism. Industrialism was the name that they gave to it. 143 00:17:39.160 --> 00:17:46.160 They take as their starting point man, who acts in order to satisfy his needs, 144 00:17:46.160 --> 00:17:58.160 And they come to the conclusion the whole function and purpose of society is to create goods, values, utilities that satisfy the material and immaterial needs of man. 145 00:17:58.160 --> 00:18:02.160 Very much of a praxeological position they have there. 146 00:18:02.160 --> 00:18:08.160 There are three ways that a human being in acting can satisfy his needs. 147 00:18:08.160 --> 00:18:13.160 Sometimes nature presents things spontaneously. That doesn't happen too often. 148 00:18:13.160 --> 00:18:26.160 He can work and labor and use his skill in order to create values and utilities, or he can plunder the values and utilities that other people have created. 149 00:18:26.160 --> 00:18:36.160 These are the only three ways. In a given society, a sharp distinction must be drawn between those who live by plunder and those who live by production. 150 00:18:36.160 --> 00:18:42.960 Production, and this is, you might say, all of industrialism is already contained there. 151 00:18:42.960 --> 00:18:46.920 They repeat this over and over again and there are different names that they use, they talk 152 00:18:46.920 --> 00:18:52.000 about the plunderers, the devouring class, the consumers, the idlers, they talk about 153 00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:57.640 the creative people, the producing people, the bees rather than the hornets, again and 154 00:18:57.640 --> 00:19:01.040 again making this sharp distinction. 155 00:19:01.040 --> 00:19:05.660 To attempt to live without producing is to live as savages. 156 00:19:05.660 --> 00:19:13.500 Mises is another name that they give to plundering people, and as Comte says, a savage can be 157 00:19:13.500 --> 00:19:20.140 found in rags or can be found in a beautiful embroidered suit, savage underneath if he 158 00:19:20.140 --> 00:19:26.540 lives by plunder, a civilized man, whether he's in rags or in a nice suit, a civilized 159 00:19:26.540 --> 00:19:32.300 man is a person who lives by production. 160 00:19:32.300 --> 00:19:56.300 Now, this contrast of classes was embedded by the industrialists, by this industrialist doctrine, in an account of history, very much in the same way that Marxism is embedded in an account of history, they embedded their doctrine in a theory of historical development. 161 00:19:56.300 --> 00:20:09.300 Basically, different societies can be characterized as plundering or productive, depending on what the main way of getting possession of wealth is. 162 00:20:09.300 --> 00:20:16.600 So that the ancient Greeks, the Romans at the time of the Republic and the Empire, they were plundering societies. 163 00:20:16.600 --> 00:20:26.600 Then, a time came when Germanic invasions occurred in Europe. A warrior barbarian elite 164 00:20:26.600 --> 00:20:33.160 placed itself in control of the toiling peasantry of Europe and that also was a plundering age, 165 00:20:33.160 --> 00:20:40.240 the age of feudalism. Throughout the Middle Ages, the nobility exploited not only the peasants 166 00:20:40.240 --> 00:20:45.440 but as now the towns came into existence and you had merchants and you had artisans, exploited 167 00:20:45.440 --> 00:20:50.400 them too in every way that they could. The noble's castle was nothing but a 168 00:20:50.400 --> 00:21:00.200 thieves den, in the words of the sans ser. Then naturally I'm condensing this 169 00:21:00.200 --> 00:21:06.260 very much. And the time came when the rapacious nobility was succeeded by the 170 00:21:06.260 --> 00:21:11.360 equally rapacious kings. And this is a quotation from Charles 171 00:21:11.360 --> 00:21:17.440 Charles Comte, whose thefts with violence, alterations of the coinage, bankruptcies, 172 00:21:17.440 --> 00:21:25.040 confiscations, hindrances to industry, are the common stuff of the history of France. 173 00:21:25.040 --> 00:21:30.560 As the producers in the towns produced more, more wealth was now available to be siphoned 174 00:21:30.560 --> 00:21:33.920 off by the plundering classes. 175 00:21:33.920 --> 00:21:41.120 Comte is especially bitter about royal manipulations of money and legal tender laws, and he quotes 176 00:21:41.120 --> 00:21:50.120 This is a 17th century writer on how discountings enriched the men of money and finance at the expense of the public. 177 00:21:50.120 --> 00:22:00.120 When we come to modern times, there are three main types of the idle classes. 178 00:22:00.120 --> 00:22:24.120 Now, the Sancerre group, like classical liberals, from the beginning, from the Levellers in the 17th century, from Turgot and Bentham and through the 19th century, up to Mises and Rothbard, were pro-peace and emphasized peace, bitter opponents of militarism, of military establishments and of war. 179 00:22:54.120 --> 00:23:03.120 These are the armies of Europe. It is massacres, rapes, pillages, conflagrations, vices and crimes, deprivation, ruin, enslavement of the peoples. 180 00:23:03.120 --> 00:23:08.120 These armies have been the shame and scourge of civilization. 181 00:23:08.120 --> 00:23:13.120 Who else are among the idols? They put in the monks. 182 00:23:13.120 --> 00:23:19.120 The monks who spread the doctrine of apathy and idleness. 183 00:23:19.120 --> 00:23:24.020 This is something I'll mention in a moment, the anti-clerical and anti-religious bias here, 184 00:23:24.020 --> 00:23:28.020 which is very much conditioned by the times and the climate of thought. 185 00:23:28.020 --> 00:23:32.320 The nobles, who are no longer able to live directly by robbing the industrious, 186 00:23:32.320 --> 00:23:40.220 they now begin to fill government positions and live by a new form of tribute under the name of taxes. 187 00:23:40.220 --> 00:23:48.620 I must confess, in reading these writers, I sometimes hear in the back of my mind the voice of Murray Rothbard saying some of these phrases. 188 00:23:48.620 --> 00:23:53.100 lived under the name of a new form of tribute called taxes. 189 00:23:54.300 --> 00:23:57.500 Who else among these, the idle class, the bourgeoisie, 190 00:23:58.500 --> 00:24:02.260 who were industrious and then used their position to ennoble themselves. 191 00:24:02.260 --> 00:24:05.660 He had a noble title, their business went to ruin, 192 00:24:05.660 --> 00:24:11.180 they had finally to appeal for pensions and to be supported at the expense of the public. 193 00:24:11.780 --> 00:24:16.700 And then finally, the governments themselves are, 194 00:24:16.700 --> 00:24:23.740 and the personnel of the governments themselves belong to these new exploiting classes. 195 00:24:23.740 --> 00:24:35.540 The class of contemporary exploiter that was explored by the industrialist writers more than any other was the government functionary. 196 00:24:35.540 --> 00:24:43.820 As Charles Comte put it, what must never be lost sight of is that a public functionary in his capacity as functionary produces absolutely nothing. 197 00:24:43.820 --> 00:24:52.920 On the contrary, he exists only on the products of the industrious class, and that he can consume nothing but what he has taken first from the producers. 198 00:24:52.920 --> 00:25:03.720 True to their kind of economic interpretation of history, they explain the growth of government by the high salaries that are offered to government employees. 199 00:25:03.720 --> 00:25:09.220 They contrast Europe with America. America, by the way, is always a favored industrialist country, 200 00:25:09.220 --> 00:25:15.220 And it's a kind of a sign of a radical classical liberal, a kind of libertarian in the past, 201 00:25:15.220 --> 00:25:19.220 that they were pro-American, not as Hayek says pro-British. 202 00:25:19.220 --> 00:25:23.920 That really wasn't the dividing line between who really loved liberty and who did not, 203 00:25:23.920 --> 00:25:27.520 but more the fact that they were pro-American. 204 00:25:27.520 --> 00:25:31.420 And in America, he says, he's a friend, the friends of Jefferson, right? 205 00:25:31.420 --> 00:25:33.320 There were no people who were friends of Jefferson. 206 00:25:33.320 --> 00:25:38.020 In America, the President of the United States travels to his inauguration on a horse, 207 00:25:38.020 --> 00:25:44.980 on horseback by himself, right? Times have changed. Nobody gets a true salary, 208 00:25:44.980 --> 00:25:49.700 at most they get indemnified for their time and for their expenses. That's how it should be. 209 00:25:50.820 --> 00:25:57.540 What is it like in France instead? He says in France we have enough people in the government 210 00:25:57.540 --> 00:26:04.980 to govern 20 kingdoms, so overloaded with the government bureaucracies. 211 00:26:04.980 --> 00:26:14.980 And as soon as the number of bureaucrats increases and the demand for jobs increases, we see two things happening. 212 00:26:14.980 --> 00:26:18.980 One, the scope of government increases as a consequence of that, do you understand? 213 00:26:18.980 --> 00:26:23.980 First, they get the jobs and then they have to look around for something to do. 214 00:26:23.980 --> 00:26:29.980 So he says we find them now concerning themselves with the food supply, with medicine, with education, with libraries, 215 00:26:29.980 --> 00:26:32.980 with everything that the people should be doing for themselves. 216 00:26:32.980 --> 00:26:52.980 He talks also, by the way, about the psychic gains of governmental employment, the power of lording it over others, and many other points could be raised here, unfortunately, 217 00:26:52.980 --> 00:27:11.980 Many other points could be raised here. Unfortunately, Evers took so much time with his talk before, virtually none left for myself. 218 00:27:11.980 --> 00:27:16.980 But let me point out one interesting thing. 219 00:27:16.980 --> 00:27:24.980 This also ties in with Marxism, because Marx has two ideas of what the state is. 220 00:27:24.980 --> 00:27:30.980 One idea is the state is the governing body, is the executive committee of the ruling class. 221 00:27:30.980 --> 00:27:35.980 You've got capitalists who pull the strings, right? That's the most common view of the class. 222 00:27:35.980 --> 00:27:43.980 However, he has another view that he expresses sometimes, which emphasizes the expansion of the government and the power of the government's bureaucracy. 223 00:27:43.980 --> 00:27:48.860 Bureaucracy. This is what Marx says in one of his works about the French government. 224 00:27:48.860 --> 00:27:54.340 This executive power, France being the classic case of bureaucracy, this 225 00:27:54.340 --> 00:27:58.140 executive power with its enormous bureaucracy and military organization, 226 00:27:58.140 --> 00:28:02.940 with its ingenious state machinery embracing wide strata, with a host of 227 00:28:02.940 --> 00:28:06.540 officials numbering half a million, besides an army of another half a 228 00:28:06.540 --> 00:28:12.580 million, this appalling parasitic body which enmeshes the body of 229 00:28:12.580 --> 00:28:19.580 The French society like a net, and chokes all of its pores, spraying up in the days of the absolute monarchy. 230 00:28:19.580 --> 00:28:31.580 Now that's his description of the government, that sounds very much like a classical liberal description of a bloated, overwrought government apparatus. 231 00:28:31.580 --> 00:28:33.580 And Marx does talk that way sometimes. 232 00:28:33.580 --> 00:28:43.580 And I don't want to say he got it directly from the industrialist writers because by his time it was a general cliché of classical liberal thought. 233 00:28:43.580 --> 00:28:51.380 That the government and the government's bureaucracy has become a leviathan, has become a monster. 234 00:28:51.380 --> 00:28:54.380 But nonetheless, it's interesting to see the parallels. 235 00:28:54.380 --> 00:29:03.140 One might also mention that the industrialist writers or other parallels, there are classes and there's also class ideology. 236 00:29:03.140 --> 00:29:06.740 They talk about ideas which are appropriate to the plundering classes. 237 00:29:06.740 --> 00:29:08.640 There's false consciousness. 238 00:29:08.640 --> 00:29:19.240 Sometimes the industrious classes take over or have instilled in them the ideas that really come from the plundering classes. 239 00:29:19.240 --> 00:29:21.940 The Caesar and Pompey. Why do you think they're glorious? 240 00:29:21.940 --> 00:29:27.440 The glorious ones are the people who fought for their freedom. 241 00:29:27.440 --> 00:29:29.940 Okay, there's very much that could be said here. 242 00:29:29.940 --> 00:29:39.940 and Thierry, remember Thierry again is the one that Marx said together with Guizot, it's from Thierry that he gets the idea of class conflict in history. 243 00:29:39.940 --> 00:29:47.580 Thierry is part of the Sancerre group, he's a friend of theirs, he contributes as many articles as Compton de Noyer due to this magazine. 244 00:29:47.580 --> 00:29:54.820 He's about, as I said, 22 years old and Thierry follows this industrialist philosophy. 245 00:29:54.820 --> 00:30:06.380 And really you can find even more extreme laissez-faire remarks in Thierry's writings than perhaps even that of his friends. 246 00:30:06.380 --> 00:30:12.260 He says, for instance, by the way, he comments on a book that Trossy put out. 247 00:30:12.260 --> 00:30:14.780 You can see the Trossy whom I mentioned before. 248 00:30:14.780 --> 00:30:16.340 Constant interrelations. 249 00:30:16.340 --> 00:30:22.740 When the Say's third edition comes out, there's a two-part review of 120 pages in the censure. 250 00:30:22.740 --> 00:30:28.900 So what we have here is a tight network of brilliant classical liberal theoreticians. 251 00:30:28.900 --> 00:30:32.220 This is what Thierry says, what will happen eventually. 252 00:30:32.220 --> 00:30:43.940 Industry, that means voluntary production, will divest power of its revenues by offering at less cost the services which power gets itself paid for. 253 00:30:43.940 --> 00:30:52.100 It's interesting to consider what they might have thought might have been the limits of that divesting power of the services it pretends to give. 254 00:30:52.100 --> 00:30:56.380 And then he says, what's the world going to look like? Federations will replace states. 255 00:30:56.380 --> 00:31:02.860 The loose but indissoluble chains of interest will succeed the despotism of men and of the laws. 256 00:31:02.860 --> 00:31:08.460 The tendency towards government, the first passion of the human race, will see to the free community 257 00:31:08.460 --> 00:31:17.420 the requirement of civilized men. The era of empire is over, the era of association begins. 258 00:31:17.420 --> 00:31:24.180 See, gradually, the old classes are going to become extinct, and everybody will be a producer. 259 00:31:24.180 --> 00:31:26.680 There will be only producers. 260 00:31:26.680 --> 00:31:29.480 A new world was being born, these men thought. 261 00:31:29.480 --> 00:31:36.680 A new industrial man with a new psychology, a new social psychology appropriate to him, a new system of values. 262 00:31:36.680 --> 00:31:39.680 There was a rupture, there was a hiatus, as they saw it. 263 00:31:39.680 --> 00:31:43.080 This was the, you might say, the utopian period. 264 00:31:43.080 --> 00:31:51.480 These were the Halcyon days, the beginning of the 19th century, when they thought that the world was going to get freer and freer. 265 00:31:51.480 --> 00:31:56.980 They had science now in the form of economics, in the form of the political economy of say, 266 00:31:56.980 --> 00:32:01.980 and the whole world was going to be changed along these lines. 267 00:32:01.980 --> 00:32:11.480 There are many quotations here that I could give you concerning this. 268 00:32:11.480 --> 00:32:37.880 And, if it should happen that, which will not happen, that they lost out in Europe, Thierry says, now, unlike the fighters of freedom of the past, who died and had to suffer defeat over the ages, over the centuries, now, now the seas are ours and beyond the seas America, so that the idea of freedom will never die, even if it's defeated in Europe. 269 00:32:37.880 --> 00:32:48.480 Okay, one could reasonably critique this analysis as brilliant and suggestive and creative as it is, I think. 270 00:32:48.480 --> 00:32:54.180 One thing that I would want to say is that by talking about production, by talking about creation, 271 00:32:54.180 --> 00:33:00.280 they skew it a little bit because that then makes it possible for them to take off in their secular, 272 00:33:00.280 --> 00:33:07.480 anti-religious way against religious people and monks and not make the distinction between those who are state-supported, 273 00:33:07.480 --> 00:33:12.200 who, of course, belong to the idle and consuming classes, on the one hand, 274 00:33:12.200 --> 00:33:16.480 the distinction between them and those who are supported by voluntary contributions, 275 00:33:16.480 --> 00:33:19.440 as they do, for instance, with beggars and paupers also. 276 00:33:19.440 --> 00:33:24.720 They put paupers in the category together with brigands and feudal lords and so on, 277 00:33:24.720 --> 00:33:29.280 because they're not creative, because they are idle, but that's not really the point. 278 00:33:29.280 --> 00:33:35.840 The question is whether somebody, whether these paupers are supported by voluntary charity, by voluntary exchange, 279 00:33:35.840 --> 00:33:38.560 or if they're supported by taxes. 280 00:33:38.560 --> 00:33:42.000 So in other words, by emphasizing production, 281 00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:47.520 rather than voluntary exchange, there are problems that come in there. 282 00:33:47.520 --> 00:33:53.920 Okay, well this was in the, about just before 1820, 283 00:33:53.920 --> 00:34:02.160 and as time goes on in the 1820s, 1830s, things begin to change. 284 00:34:02.160 --> 00:34:09.040 We have this masterful, liberating, militant philosophy, 285 00:34:09.040 --> 00:34:15.600 but the carriers of that philosophy begin to accommodate themselves, especially after 1830. 286 00:34:15.600 --> 00:34:22.800 In 1830, there's another revolution in France, and the old aristocratic classes are thrown out. 287 00:34:22.800 --> 00:34:28.160 This is now called the bourgeois revolution, because there is a king, Louis Philippe, 288 00:34:28.160 --> 00:34:36.760 But he surrounds himself with bankers, with businessmen, with merchants, and many people get the idea, 289 00:34:36.760 --> 00:34:45.920 well, the old idle classes, the old rapacious exploiting classes, the church, the lords and so on, they're out. 290 00:34:45.920 --> 00:34:54.680 And now we have the industrious ones, the ones that we all along said should be in power, they're in power. 291 00:34:54.680 --> 00:35:09.680 Of course, this period of the July Monarchy, as it's called, the regime that's set up in 1830, is known as one of the most corrupt in the whole history of France. 292 00:35:09.680 --> 00:35:18.680 These bankers and these businessmen who now took over France used it in the way that Say himself before had predicted and complained. 293 00:35:18.680 --> 00:35:23.680 Namely, they pretend to be part of the industrious class, they pretend to be creative entrepreneurs. 294 00:35:23.680 --> 00:35:46.280 What are they doing now, going to the state, asking for subsidies for their railroads, now the railroads are built with state subsidies, and more than anything else, and protective tariffs, it was a protectionist regime, and more than anything else, asking for government jobs. 295 00:35:46.280 --> 00:35:58.200 Here's a quotation from Alexis de Tocqueville about this bourgeois republic, this July monarchy, 296 00:35:58.200 --> 00:36:05.560 that finally Thierry and Comte and Dunway accepted. Some of them took jobs in the new monarchy. 297 00:36:05.560 --> 00:36:12.240 See, these people have been pushing this radical class analysis before, now accommodating themselves to this regime. 298 00:36:12.240 --> 00:36:27.240 The Middle Class, he says, entrenched itself in every vacant government job, 299 00:36:27.240 --> 00:36:34.240 prodigiously augmented the number of such jobs, and accustomed itself to live almost as much upon the Treasury as upon its own industry. 300 00:36:34.240 --> 00:36:45.240 In other words, during this period, those functionaries that the industrialists had been bitterly attacking now are increased many-fold. 301 00:36:45.240 --> 00:36:58.240 Okay, this much more than could be said about this, but one thing I want to point out to you is that this is not the only instance in the history of classical liberalism of a theory of classes and a theory of class conflict analysis. 302 00:36:58.240 --> 00:37:05.240 As a matter of fact, one might say that in America, a purer version of this theory was developed, 303 00:37:05.240 --> 00:37:11.240 purer because they were not confused by the idea of inherited orders. 304 00:37:11.240 --> 00:37:18.240 The upper estates, as they were called, and then finally the third estate, which existed in Europe. 305 00:37:18.240 --> 00:37:26.240 In America, the connection between classes and government action, and especially the dispensing of government money, 306 00:37:26.240 --> 00:37:27.920 was much clearer than it was in Europe. 307 00:37:27.920 --> 00:37:32.640 You could talk about classes on the basis of heredity, style, lifestyle and so on. 308 00:37:32.640 --> 00:37:33.760 Didn't exist in America. 309 00:37:33.760 --> 00:37:36.080 So you had a clearer kind of situation there. 310 00:37:36.080 --> 00:37:38.080 And in America such a tradition does develop. 311 00:37:39.440 --> 00:37:46.880 From the time of John Taylor of Caroline through William Leggett and John C. Calhoun. 312 00:37:48.080 --> 00:37:52.800 John Taylor and what you have there is the Jeffersonian tradition, Jacksonian tradition, 313 00:37:52.800 --> 00:38:00.800 The Anti-Government Tradition and the tradition that's very jealous of the privileges that that central government is giving out to certain classes. 314 00:38:00.800 --> 00:38:07.800 John Taylor of Caroline was outraged by what he saw as the betrayal of the American Revolution and the principles of the revolution. 315 00:38:07.800 --> 00:38:15.800 By a new aristocracy, keeps using the term aristocracy, based on separate legal interests, as he called it. 316 00:38:15.800 --> 00:38:38.800 Above all the bankers who are privileged to issue legal tender, issue phony paper that has the force of legal tender, new aristocracy based on the contractors who gain from the public improvements as they're called, the protected manufacturers, these are the new aristocrats in America. 317 00:38:38.800 --> 00:38:46.800 The same view, three decades later, is presented in America in the 1830s by William Leggett. 318 00:38:46.800 --> 00:38:53.800 Liberty Press has put out a collection of his essays from back then, which are wonderful. 319 00:38:53.800 --> 00:39:02.800 If you want to see a real dyed-in-the-wool American libertarian, whose outrage of the Governor of New York has the nerve to declare a Thanksgiving Day. 320 00:39:02.800 --> 00:39:06.800 Who the hell is he to tell us when we can give thanksgiving to God? 321 00:39:06.800 --> 00:39:10.800 That should be done by our ministers, our priests, not by the governor of New York. 322 00:39:10.800 --> 00:39:13.800 Hardcore, in many respects. 323 00:39:13.800 --> 00:39:19.800 And especially on the favors given out by the government in the creation of a new aristocracy. 324 00:39:19.800 --> 00:39:27.800 He says in Europe, you can go to a place in the area of Genoa where they have what they call the street of palaces. 325 00:39:27.800 --> 00:39:40.800 Look at those beautiful palaces and you can tell they were built on the blood and bones of productive people, built by the aristocracy. 326 00:39:40.800 --> 00:39:54.800 He says in America we have such places also, not for the kind of European aristocrats, but what he calls our scrip aristocracy, again the bankers and the people who are putting out paper money with the support of the state. 327 00:39:54.800 --> 00:40:24.800 John C. Calhoun directs attention especially to the taxing and dispersing power of the government and says, when all is said and done, what is government about? Government collects money from some people, those are the people who pay taxes, disperses it to another set of people. And those are the two classes when all is said and done, that politics is about money. 328 00:40:24.800 --> 00:40:30.800 The people who gain from taxes and the people who lose. 329 00:40:30.800 --> 00:40:36.800 Murray Rothbard has emphasized the importance of John C. Calhoun. 330 00:40:36.800 --> 00:40:43.800 This idea of classes and a class conflict again and again. 331 00:40:43.800 --> 00:40:48.800 John Bright and Richard Cobden, when they're fighting to repeal the Corn Laws in England, 332 00:40:48.800 --> 00:40:53.800 talk about the aristocracy as a class and the great proprietors of the soil. 333 00:40:53.800 --> 00:40:58.960 The class that is exploiting the working productive classes of England and just as 334 00:40:58.960 --> 00:41:03.160 with the industrialists who are the working classes everybody who produces 335 00:41:03.160 --> 00:41:07.120 whether they're capitalists whether they're entrepreneurs merchants working 336 00:41:07.120 --> 00:41:13.160 people everybody who produces values William Graham Sumner talks about the 337 00:41:13.160 --> 00:41:17.600 plutocrats this is a term which was I think during the New Deal maybe the 338 00:41:17.600 --> 00:41:23.640 progressive era era was debased because plutocrats meant not just anybody who's 339 00:41:23.640 --> 00:41:28.440 is rich, but capitalists who use the state rather than the market to get what they want. 340 00:41:28.440 --> 00:41:30.840 Again, constituting themselves into a class. 341 00:41:30.840 --> 00:41:38.480 And all of these people are, by the way, I do motions now because I heard that it, as 342 00:41:38.480 --> 00:41:49.020 with Governor Dukakis, put a little bit of life into my talks, and all of these writers 343 00:41:49.020 --> 00:41:54.220 emphasize the exploiting character, especially in the military establishment. 344 00:41:54.220 --> 00:41:58.420 They were the great anti-imperialists of their time. 345 00:41:58.420 --> 00:42:00.180 We are exploited by many people. 346 00:42:00.180 --> 00:42:07.140 And not least of them are the leeches in the armies and navies of the world. 347 00:42:07.140 --> 00:42:12.740 Now, it seems to me that we're, in many respects, seeing a revival of this class conflict analysis. 348 00:42:12.740 --> 00:42:15.580 I could mention to you various scholars. 349 00:42:15.580 --> 00:42:19.220 Professor Skokpol, Theda Skokpol 350 00:42:19.220 --> 00:42:24.140 of the University of Chicago, S-K-O-C-P-O-L, 351 00:42:24.140 --> 00:42:26.340 edited a book called Significantly, 352 00:42:26.340 --> 00:42:28.940 Bringing the State Back In. 353 00:42:28.940 --> 00:42:32.300 Bringing the state back in when we are discussing classes 354 00:42:32.300 --> 00:42:34.780 and the dynamics of social conflict. 355 00:42:34.780 --> 00:42:36.440 Understand, bringing the state back in 356 00:42:36.440 --> 00:42:40.420 as the instrument that creates classes by its very action. 357 00:42:42.740 --> 00:42:47.100 and other scholars could be mentioned as well. 358 00:42:47.100 --> 00:42:50.180 One thing I want to point out to you that from a scientific point of view it seems to 359 00:42:50.180 --> 00:42:51.420 be undeniable 360 00:42:51.420 --> 00:42:54.960 that this classical liberal theory 361 00:42:54.960 --> 00:42:58.720 aside from everything else has a superiority over Marxism 362 00:42:58.720 --> 00:43:03.900 in that it can explain much more than Marxism can explain. In particular 363 00:43:03.900 --> 00:43:08.060 it can explain Marxist societies. 364 00:43:08.060 --> 00:43:11.940 You understand? The Marxist theory cannot explain Marxist societies. 365 00:43:11.940 --> 00:43:14.700 There aren't supposed to be any classes anymore. 366 00:43:14.700 --> 00:43:18.740 Communism is the abolition of private property, Marx said, in so many words. 367 00:43:18.740 --> 00:43:19.700 He said that. 368 00:43:19.700 --> 00:43:22.420 Well, private property has been abolished. 369 00:43:22.420 --> 00:43:26.980 It's clear enough that in some sense, whether you call them a stratum 370 00:43:26.980 --> 00:43:31.300 rather than a class, in some sense there are classes 371 00:43:31.300 --> 00:43:34.380 in all Marxist countries. 372 00:43:34.380 --> 00:43:36.940 The classical liberal theory can explain that, 373 00:43:36.940 --> 00:43:40.780 because it is control of the state power that creates classes there 374 00:43:40.780 --> 00:43:44.780 as it does in relatively free market societies as well. 375 00:43:46.900 --> 00:43:51.900 So that it seems to me that as Bill Evers said, 376 00:43:53.300 --> 00:43:56.860 we are at a historic turning point. 377 00:43:57.880 --> 00:44:02.540 Marxism seems to be dying as a philosophy. 378 00:44:02.540 --> 00:44:07.540 Evidently, virtually no one who's not in the secret police 379 00:44:07.540 --> 00:44:19.540 I learned from friends that Marxism, which at one time was going to be marching through the institutions of West Germany and France, it's dying there too. 380 00:44:19.540 --> 00:44:32.540 It's in very bad repute in the academy. It's only in England and now belatedly in America and in institutions of higher learning that Marxism is experiencing a certain revival. 381 00:44:32.540 --> 00:44:40.060 is experience a certain revival talk about cultural lag that's in theory in 382 00:44:40.060 --> 00:44:49.500 practice they will be setting up a stock exchange in Budapest Bill Evers 383 00:44:49.500 --> 00:44:54.740 mentioned as I'm glad to see that he notices headlines of newspapers at least 384 00:44:54.740 --> 00:45:03.740 I mentioned that Gorbachev, at times, an end of collectivization, collectivization of land. 385 00:45:03.740 --> 00:45:12.740 Well, you know, what was it all about then? What was it all about? Marxism in Russia. 386 00:45:12.740 --> 00:45:19.740 And the end of collectivization of land, well, it's too bad, it's a little too late for 10 million people. 387 00:45:19.740 --> 00:45:38.740 But still, certainly in the right direction, still, with the death philosophically and practically, one hopes, of Marxism, which really turned out to be what H.B. Acton called it, the illusion of the epoch, it was the illusion of the 20th century. 388 00:45:38.740 --> 00:46:06.730 But with its death as we approach the 21st century, we should not lose track and give up the advantages that we can get from something like class conflict analysis to make us understand politics because class conflict analysis was not originally Marxist, predated Marxism and the classical liberal version of it can illuminate social reality quite well even today. Thank you.