WEBVTT NOTE The State, the Intellectuals, and the Role of Anti-Intellectual-Intellectuals 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.600 My first public appearance as a speaker in the United States took place more than two 2 00:00:05.600 --> 00:00:13.400 decades ago here in New York City in 1986 at the first major Mises Institute conference 3 00:00:13.400 --> 00:00:20.600 held to celebrate Murray Rothbard's 60th birthday and so I'm particularly pleased to be back 4 00:00:20.600 --> 00:00:21.600 here. 5 00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:26.720 Now, let me begin with the definition of a state. 6 00:00:26.720 --> 00:00:34.560 What must an agent be able to do to qualify as a state? This agent must be able to insist 7 00:00:34.560 --> 00:00:41.720 that all conflicts among the inhabitants of a given territory be brought to him for ultimate 8 00:00:41.720 --> 00:00:48.760 decision making or be subject to his final review. In particular, this agent must be 9 00:00:48.760 --> 00:00:55.760 be able to insist that all conflicts involving himself be adjudicated by him or his own agent. 10 00:00:57.160 --> 00:01:03.760 And implied in the power to exclude all others from acting as ultimate judge, as the second 11 00:01:03.760 --> 00:01:10.760 defining characteristic of the state, is the agent's power to tax, that is to unilaterally 12 00:01:10.840 --> 00:01:17.520 determine the price that justice seekers must pay for his services. Now based on this 13 00:01:17.520 --> 00:01:24.520 With this definition of a state, it is easy to understand why a desire to control a state might exist. 14 00:01:24.520 --> 00:01:32.520 For whoever is a monopolist of final arbitration within a given territory can make laws. 15 00:01:32.520 --> 00:01:39.520 And he who can legislate can also tax. And surely this is an enviable position. 16 00:01:39.520 --> 00:01:45.520 More difficult to understand is how anyone can get away with controlling a state. 17 00:01:45.520 --> 00:01:49.520 Why would others put up with such an institution? 18 00:01:49.520 --> 00:01:54.520 Now, I want to approach the answer to this question indirectly. 19 00:01:54.520 --> 00:02:01.520 Suppose you and your friends happen to be in control of such an extraordinary institution. 20 00:02:01.520 --> 00:02:10.520 What would you do to maintain your position, provided, of course, you didn't have any moral scruples? 21 00:02:10.520 --> 00:02:40.520 You would certainly use some of your tax income to hire some thugs. First, to make peace among your subjects so that they stay productive and there is something to tax for you in the future. But more importantly, because you might need these thugs for your own protection should the people somehow wake up from their dogmatic slumber and challenge you. Now, this will not do, however. In particular, 22 00:02:40.520 --> 00:02:47.720 If you and your friends are a small minority in comparison to the number of your subjects, 23 00:02:47.720 --> 00:02:54.320 and only if you are a small minority can you live a comfortable life on the backs of others. 24 00:02:54.320 --> 00:03:02.720 For a minority cannot lastingly rule a majority solely by brute force, it must rule by opinion. 25 00:03:02.720 --> 00:03:09.320 The majority of the population must be brought to voluntarily accept your rule. 26 00:03:09.320 --> 00:03:15.280 This is not to say that the majority must agree with every one of your measures. Indeed, 27 00:03:15.280 --> 00:03:21.160 it may well believe that many of your policies are mistaken. However, it must believe in 28 00:03:21.160 --> 00:03:27.400 the legitimacy of the institution of the state as such, and hence that even if a particular 29 00:03:27.400 --> 00:03:34.140 policy may be wrong, that such mistake is an accident that one must tolerate in view 30 00:03:34.140 --> 00:03:40.020 In view of the fact that some greater good is provided by this institution. 31 00:03:40.020 --> 00:03:45.800 Yet how can one persuade the majority of the population to believe this? 32 00:03:45.800 --> 00:03:49.980 And the answer is only with the help of the intellectuals. 33 00:03:49.980 --> 00:03:53.380 Now how do you get the intellectuals to work for you? 34 00:03:53.380 --> 00:03:55.380 To this the answer is easy. 35 00:03:55.380 --> 00:04:02.380 The market demand for intellectual services is not exactly high and stable. 36 00:04:02.380 --> 00:04:08.320 Intellectuals would be at the mercy of the fleeting values of the masses, and the masses 37 00:04:08.320 --> 00:04:15.080 are uninterested in intellectual philosophical concerns. The state, on the other hand, can 38 00:04:15.080 --> 00:04:22.520 accommodate the intellectuals typically over-inflated egos and offer them a warm, secure and permanent 39 00:04:22.520 --> 00:04:29.520 birth in its apparatus. However, it is not sufficient that you employ just some intellectuals. 40 00:04:29.520 --> 00:04:59.520 You must essentially employ them all, even the ones who work in areas far removed from those that you are primarily concerned with, that is philosophy, the social sciences and the humanities, for even intellectuals working in mathematics or the natural sciences, for instance, can obviously think for themselves and so can become potentially dangerous. It is thus important that you secure also their loyalty to the state. 41 00:04:59.520 --> 00:05:07.160 Put differently, you must become a monopolist, and this is best achieved if all educational 42 00:05:07.160 --> 00:05:14.120 institutions from kindergarten to universities are brought under state control and all teaching 43 00:05:14.120 --> 00:05:20.920 and researching personnel is state certified. But what if the people do not want to become 44 00:05:20.920 --> 00:05:28.080 educated? For this, education must be made compulsory, and in order to subject the people 45 00:05:28.080 --> 00:05:35.080 The intellectuals know such egalitarianism to be false, of course, yet to proclaim nonsense such as everyone is a potential Einstein if only given sufficient educational attention pleases the masses and, in turn, provides an almost unlimited demand for intellectual services. 46 00:05:58.080 --> 00:06:06.640 Now, none of this guarantees correct status thinking, of course. It certainly helps, however, 47 00:06:06.640 --> 00:06:12.740 in reaching the correct status conclusion, if one realizes that without the state one 48 00:06:12.740 --> 00:06:19.560 might be out of work and may have to try one's hands at the mechanics of gas pump operation 49 00:06:19.560 --> 00:06:26.300 instead of concerning oneself with such pressing problems as alienation, equity, exploitation, 50 00:06:26.300 --> 00:06:32.380 The Deconstruction of Gender and Sex Roles or the Culture of the Eskimos, the Hoppes 51 00:06:32.380 --> 00:06:42.100 or the Zulus. 52 00:06:42.100 --> 00:06:48.860 In any case, even if the intellectuals feel underappreciated by you, that is, by one particular 53 00:06:48.860 --> 00:06:54.880 state administration, they know that help can only come from another state administration, 54 00:06:54.880 --> 00:07:01.880 but certainly not from an intellectual assault on the institution of a state as such. Hence, 55 00:07:01.900 --> 00:07:08.980 it is hardly surprising that as a matter of fact, the overwhelming majority of contemporary 56 00:07:08.980 --> 00:07:13.760 intellectuals, including most conservative or so-called free market intellectuals are 57 00:07:13.760 --> 00:07:20.360 fundamentally and philosophically statists. Now has the work of the intellectuals paid 58 00:07:20.360 --> 00:07:26.800 off for the state. I would think so. If asked whether the institution of a state is necessary, 59 00:07:26.800 --> 00:07:33.800 I do not think it is exaggerated to say that 99% of all people would unhesitatingly say 60 00:07:33.840 --> 00:07:40.840 yes. And yet, this success rests on rather shaky grounds, and the entire status edifice 61 00:07:40.880 --> 00:07:46.440 can be brought down if only the work of the intellectuals is countered by the work of 62 00:07:46.440 --> 00:07:51.240 of Anti-intellectual intellectuals, as I like to call them. 63 00:07:51.240 --> 00:07:58.240 The overwhelming majority of state supporters are not philosophical statists. That is, status 64 00:07:58.400 --> 00:08:04.040 because they have thought about the matter. Most people do not think much about anything 65 00:08:04.040 --> 00:08:11.040 philosophical at all. They go about their daily lives and that is it. So most support 66 00:08:11.040 --> 00:08:18.040 stems from the mere fact that the state exists and has always existed as far as one can remember 67 00:08:18.320 --> 00:08:24.920 and that is typically not farther away than one's own lifetime. That is the greatest achievement 68 00:08:24.920 --> 00:08:30.720 of the status intellectuals is the fact that they have cultivated the masses natural intellectual 69 00:08:30.720 --> 00:08:37.720 laziness or incapacity and never allowed for the subject of the state to come up for serious 70 00:08:37.720 --> 00:08:46.480 for serious discussion. The state is considered as an unquestionable part of the social fabric. 71 00:08:46.480 --> 00:08:53.200 The first and foremost task of the anti-intellectual intellectuals then is to counter this dogmatic 72 00:08:53.200 --> 00:09:00.200 slumber of the masses by offering a precise definition of the state as I have done at 73 00:09:00.200 --> 00:09:07.240 the outset and then to ask if there is not something truly remarkable, odd, strange, 74 00:09:07.240 --> 00:09:14.240 I am confident that such simple definitional work will produce some very first but serious doubt regarding an institution that one previously had been taken for granted, and that seems to be a good start. 75 00:09:28.520 --> 00:09:35.520 Again, recall, a state is an institution that decides who is right and wrong in conflicts involving itself. 76 00:09:37.240 --> 00:09:45.920 Now, further, proceeding from less sophisticated yet not incidentally more popular pro-state 77 00:09:45.920 --> 00:09:52.040 arguments to more sophisticated ones, to the extent that intellectuals have deemed it necessary 78 00:09:52.040 --> 00:09:58.520 to argue in favor of the state at all, their most popular argument, encountered already 79 00:09:58.520 --> 00:10:05.000 at kindergarten age, runs like this. Some activities of the state are pointed out, the 80 00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:10.760 Builds Roads, Kindergarten Schools, it delivers the mail and puts the policeman on the street. 81 00:10:10.760 --> 00:10:17.400 Imagine there would be no state, then we would not have these goods. Thus a state is necessary. 82 00:10:17.400 --> 00:10:22.040 And at the university level, a slightly more sophisticated version of the same argument 83 00:10:22.040 --> 00:10:28.840 is presented. It goes like this. True, markets are best at providing many or even most things, 84 00:10:28.840 --> 00:10:34.880 But there are other goods markets cannot provide or cannot provide in sufficient quantity or 85 00:10:34.880 --> 00:10:41.400 quality. And these other so-called public goods are goods which bestow benefits onto 86 00:10:41.400 --> 00:10:48.400 people beyond those people who have actually produced or paid for them. Foremost among 87 00:10:48.500 --> 00:10:55.500 such goods ranks typically education and research. Education and research, for instance, it is 88 00:10:55.500 --> 00:11:02.500 it is argued are extremely valuable goods. They would be under produced, however, because 89 00:11:02.940 --> 00:11:09.940 of free riders, that is cheats who benefit via so called neighborhood effects from education 90 00:11:11.680 --> 00:11:18.460 and research without actually paying for it. Thus, the state is necessary to provide otherwise 91 00:11:18.460 --> 00:11:25.460 under produced or unproduced public goods such as education and research. 92 00:11:25.500 --> 00:11:31.100 Now these statist arguments can be refuted by a combination of three fundamental insights. 93 00:11:31.100 --> 00:11:36.100 First, as for the kindergarten argument, it does not follow from the fact that the state 94 00:11:36.100 --> 00:11:42.040 provides roads and schools that only the state can provide such goods. People have little 95 00:11:42.040 --> 00:11:48.320 difficulty recognizing that this is a fallacy. From the fact that monkeys can ride bikes, 96 00:11:48.320 --> 00:11:55.320 it does not follow that only monkeys can ride bikes. And secondly, immediately following, 97 00:11:55.500 --> 00:12:01.660 It must be recalled that the state is an institution that can legislate and tax, and hence that 98 00:12:01.660 --> 00:12:08.160 state agents have little incentive to produce efficiently. State roads and schools will 99 00:12:08.160 --> 00:12:14.920 only be more costly and their quality will be lower, for there is always a tendency for 100 00:12:14.920 --> 00:12:21.540 state agents to use up as many resources as possible doing whatever they do, but actually 101 00:12:21.540 --> 00:12:51.540 Now, third, as for the more sophisticated statist argument, it involves exactly the same fallacy encountered already at the kindergarten level. For even if one were to grant the rest of the argument, it is still a fallacy to conclude from the fact that states provide public goods that only states can do so. But more importantly, it must be pointed out that the entire argument demonstrates a total ignorance of the most fundamental 102 00:12:51.540 --> 00:12:54.540 The fundamental fact of human life, namely scarcity. 103 00:12:54.540 --> 00:12:58.540 True, markets will not provide for all desirable things. 104 00:12:58.540 --> 00:13:04.540 They are always unsatisfied once, as long as we do not inhabit the Garden of Eden. 105 00:13:04.540 --> 00:13:11.540 But to bring such unproduced goods into existence, scarce resources must be expended, 106 00:13:11.540 --> 00:13:17.540 which consequently can no longer be used to produce other, likewise desirable things. 107 00:13:17.540 --> 00:13:24.540 Whether public goods exist next to private ones does not matter in this regard. The fact 108 00:13:24.620 --> 00:13:30.980 of scarcity remains unchanged. More public goods can only come at the expense of less 109 00:13:30.980 --> 00:13:37.980 private goods. Yet what needs to be demonstrated is that one good is more important and valuable 110 00:13:38.860 --> 00:13:45.860 than another one. This is what is meant by economizing. Yet can the state help economize 111 00:13:45.860 --> 00:13:52.340 Scars Resources. This is the question that must be answered. In fact, however, conclusive 112 00:13:52.340 --> 00:13:59.340 proof exists that the state does not and cannot economize, for in order to produce anything, 113 00:14:00.140 --> 00:14:06.620 the state must resort to taxation or to legislation, which demonstrates irrefutably that its subjects 114 00:14:06.620 --> 00:14:13.260 do not want what the state produces, but actually prefer something else as more important than 115 00:14:13.260 --> 00:14:16.060 and those things produced by the state. 116 00:14:16.060 --> 00:14:20.580 Rather than economize, the state can only redistribute. 117 00:14:20.580 --> 00:14:23.680 It can produce more of what it wants 118 00:14:23.680 --> 00:14:26.060 and less of what the people want. 119 00:14:26.060 --> 00:14:29.020 And to recall, whatever the state then produces 120 00:14:29.020 --> 00:14:31.560 will be produced inefficiently. 121 00:14:31.560 --> 00:14:33.880 Finally, the most sophisticated argument 122 00:14:33.880 --> 00:14:36.960 in favor of the state must be briefly examined. 123 00:14:36.960 --> 00:14:39.720 From hops on down to this argument 124 00:14:39.720 --> 00:14:42.020 has been repeated endlessly. 125 00:14:42.020 --> 00:15:12.020 It runs like this. In the state of nature, that is before the establishment of a state permanent conflict reigns, everyone claims a right to everything and this will result in interminable war. There is no way out of this predicament by means of agreement for who would enforce these agreements. Whenever the situation appeared advantageous, one or both parties would break the agreement and conflict would result. 126 00:15:12.020 --> 00:15:18.900 Hence people recognize that there is but one solution to the desirable goal of peace, namely 127 00:15:18.900 --> 00:15:25.900 the establishment per agreement of a state, namely a third independent party as ultimate 128 00:15:25.900 --> 00:15:33.020 judge and enforcer. Yet if this thesis is correct and agreements require an outside 129 00:15:33.020 --> 00:15:41.540 enforcer to make them binding, then a state by agreement can never come into existence 130 00:15:41.540 --> 00:16:11.540 For in order to enforce the agreement which leads to the establishment of a state to make this agreement binding, so to speak, another outside enforcer, a prior state, would already have to exist. And in order for this state to have come into existence, yet another, still earlier state, must be postulated, and so an infinite regress results. On the other hand, if we accept that 131 00:16:11.540 --> 00:16:18.540 If the states do exist, and of course they do, then this very fact contradicts the Hobbesian story. 132 00:16:18.540 --> 00:16:24.540 The state itself has come into existence without any outside enforcer. 133 00:16:24.540 --> 00:16:30.540 At the time of the alleged agreement, no prior state existed. 134 00:16:30.540 --> 00:16:38.540 Moreover, once a state is in existence, the resulting social order still remains a self-enforcing one. 135 00:16:38.540 --> 00:16:47.540 To be sure, if A and B now agree on something, their agreements are made binding by an external party, the state. 136 00:16:47.540 --> 00:16:53.540 However, the state itself is not so bound by any outside enforcer. 137 00:16:53.540 --> 00:17:02.540 There exists no external third party insofar as conflicts between state agents and state subjects are concerned. 138 00:17:02.540 --> 00:17:10.540 And likewise, there exists no external third party for conflicts between different state agents. 139 00:17:10.540 --> 00:17:20.540 Insofar as agreements entered into by the state are concerned, that is, such agreements can only be self-binding on the state. 140 00:17:20.540 --> 00:17:30.540 That is, the state is bound by nothing except its own self-accepted and enforced rules, the constraints that it imposes on itself. 141 00:17:30.540 --> 00:17:43.540 Yet this is precisely what the Hobbesian story wants to rule out as impossible, namely a social system capable of producing peace and security based on the self-enforcement of rules. 142 00:17:43.540 --> 00:18:03.540 Now this brings me to the final step in my argument. If the failures of the pro-state arguments are so apparent and the anti-state or anarchist position is so compelling, why then are anti-intellectual intellectuals so unsuccessful in making their case? 143 00:18:03.540 --> 00:18:16.540 The reason is that ideas don't spread on its own. For ideas to spread it requires proponents of these ideas and these proponents cannot live of love and air alone. 144 00:18:16.540 --> 00:18:24.540 Anti-intellectual intellectuals too require resources to sustain a living so that they can write and teach. 145 00:18:24.540 --> 00:18:33.540 And if they want to be effective in their work, they require an institutional support system that helps promote and distribute their ideas. 146 00:18:33.540 --> 00:18:36.540 This is the crux of the problem then. 147 00:18:36.540 --> 00:18:45.540 True, the distribution of ideas, also unorthodox ideas, has become much easier in recent decades with the development of the Internet. 148 00:18:45.540 --> 00:19:15.540 However, this does not change in the slightest effect that 99% or so of all intellectuals are directly or indirectly supported by the state and that 99% or so of all institutional support of education and research is state financed with predictable consequences. That is to say, there is simply not enough financial support available for anti-intellectual intellectual endeavors to turn the currently 149 00:19:15.540 --> 00:19:45.540 and miniscule minority of principled, anti-state intellectuals into the critical mass necessary to overcome the overwhelming odds in favor of the state. True, some anti-intellectual intellectuals have managed to slip through the cracks and a few have even attained pampered positions within the current status education and research system, but these are institutional accidents which are quickly repaired within the system. 150 00:19:45.540 --> 00:19:51.700 System, by either corrupting these individuals or rendering them institutional, ineffective 151 00:19:51.700 --> 00:19:57.940 and freezing them out. Hence, there is no way around the insight that there are not enough 152 00:19:57.940 --> 00:20:02.740 anti-intellectual intellectuals around because there is insufficient funding to support them 153 00:20:02.740 --> 00:20:09.740 in larger numbers, compelling many potential anti-state intellectuals to choose other non-intellectual 154 00:20:09.740 --> 00:20:21.740 Hardly surprising the state had its hands in creating this situation, namely by doing its very best to destroy what I call the natural elites. 155 00:20:21.740 --> 00:20:26.740 Natural elites are men of independent wealth and independent minds. 156 00:20:26.740 --> 00:20:33.740 and Minds. Competing as such, most directly with the state's monopolistic aspiration 157 00:20:34.020 --> 00:20:40.620 as ultimate judge, natural elites everywhere are considered potentially dangerous by the 158 00:20:40.620 --> 00:20:46.940 state. Accordingly, to reduce this danger, the state has co-opted members of the natural 159 00:20:46.940 --> 00:20:53.220 elite into the state system and thereby made their wealth dependent on continued friendly 160 00:20:53.220 --> 00:21:00.220 behavior on their part, or else it has confiscated or threatened to confiscate their wealth, 161 00:21:01.140 --> 00:21:07.220 and in any case it has sucked them all into the very same education system as everyone 162 00:21:07.220 --> 00:21:14.220 else. To be sure, there still exist wealthy men. Indeed, more of them exist today than 163 00:21:14.660 --> 00:21:21.540 ever before. But increasingly less of them can be described as independently wealthy 164 00:21:21.540 --> 00:21:27.860 because most of their wealth can be destroyed in the blink of an eye by the state. Nor is 165 00:21:27.860 --> 00:21:33.580 there a lack of intelligence to be found among these people. But as a result of decades of 166 00:21:33.580 --> 00:21:40.300 relentless educational propaganda, their once independent minds have become dulled, clouded 167 00:21:40.300 --> 00:21:47.060 and corrupted. They feel guilty about their wealth and dabble in politically correct so-called 168 00:21:47.060 --> 00:21:53.920 Social endeavors to compensate for their alleged sins. And in any case, the rich and famous 169 00:21:53.920 --> 00:22:00.920 today embrace the very same easy to be manipulated high time preference lifestyle of don't worry, 170 00:22:01.920 --> 00:22:08.920 be happy as the masses. Yet not all hope is lost because there exists the Mises Institute 171 00:22:09.540 --> 00:22:15.960 which within the 25 years of its existence has become the world's leading center of 172 00:22:15.960 --> 00:22:22.720 of Anti-Statist Intellectual Work. And despite all efforts to the contrary and however reduced 173 00:22:22.720 --> 00:22:29.120 in numbers and strengths, there still exists some remnants of a natural elite as the presence 174 00:22:29.120 --> 00:22:36.520 of you, the supporters of the Mises Institute, proves. Together, with your help, the moral 175 00:22:36.520 --> 00:22:42.920 and economic perversion that is the state can be exposed. With some luck, we may actually 176 00:22:42.920 --> 00:22:48.840 We initiate a genuine social revolution, namely the triumph of liberty and with it unheard 177 00:22:48.840 --> 00:22:57.840 of prosperity over state tyranny, impoverishment and waste. Or we may at least contribute to 178 00:22:57.840 --> 00:23:04.360 the fact that matters do not become worse, or become worse only more slowly. And in any 179 00:23:04.360 --> 00:23:11.000 case together we can take pride in the fact that we made a contribution to keep moral 180 00:23:11.000 --> 00:23:18.000 and Economic Truths Alive. Thank you.