This man spits words like Ravi Shankar played the sitar. "How could government accomplish such a feat and bring about a change in public opinion that removed the former constraint on its size and instead allowed (and still allows) it to grow in absolute as well as relative terms? 36 There can be no doubt that the key element in this turn-around of public opinion that started to take hold in Western Europe around the mid-nineteenth century, around the turn of this century in the U.S., and then at a steadily accelerating pace everywhere after World War I 37 has been the emergence of attractive new—implicitly or explicitly—statist ideologies. In fact, states have always been aware of the decisive importance of state-supportive ideologies for stabilizing and increasing their exploitative grip on a population, and in this knowledge they have always made attempts to exert their control, above all, over the institutions of education. Even at their weakest, it should appear natural to see them give particular attention to “correct” ideological instruction and to concentrate whatever is left of their power on the destruction of all independent institutions of learning and their take-over into the states’ monopolistic hands. Accordingly, in order to regain the upper hand in the permanent struggle of ideas, since the mid-nineteenth century a steady process of nationalizing or socializing schools and universities (with one of the most recent examples being the unsuccessful attempt by the Mitterand government to crush France’s Catholic schools) and lengthening the period of compulsory schooling has taken place. 38 Yet pointing out this and the related facts of an increasingly close alliance between state and intellectuals 39 and the latter’s rewriting history in line with statist ideologies merely puts the problem into focus. Indeed, when one hears about the state’s take-over of the system of education, must one not immediately ask how it could succeed in doing so if public opinion were really committed to a private property ethic?! Such a take-over presupposes a change in public opinion. How, then, was this accomplished, especially in view of the fact that such a change implies the acceptance of manifestly wrong ideas and thus can hardly be explained as an endogenously motivated process of intellectual advancement? It would seem that such a change toward falsehood requires the systematic introduction of exogenous forces: A true ideology is capable of supporting itself merely by virtue of being true. A false one needs reinforcement by outside influences with a clear-cut, tangible impact on people in order to be capable of generating and supporting a climate of intellectual corruption. It is to these tangible, ideology-supporting and reinforcing factors that one must turn to understand the decline of the private property ethic and the corresponding rise of statism during the last 100 to 150 years. 40 I will discuss four such factors and explain their corruptive function for public opinion. All are changes in the organizational structure of the state. The first one is the state’s structural adjustment from a military or police state toward a redistributive one. (The prototype of such an organizational change is the often copied Prussia under Bismarck.) Instead of a governmental structure that is characterized by a small ruling class that uses its exploitatively appropriated resources almost exclusively for pure governmental consumption or for the maintenance of its military and police forces, states now increasingly engage in a policy of actively buying support among the people outside of the governmental apparatus itself. Through a system of transfer payments, grants of privilege to special clients, and governmental production and provision of certain “civilian” goods and services (as for instance education), the population is made increasingly dependent on the continuation of state rule. People outside the governmental apparatus increasingly have a tangible financial stake in its existence and would be harmed, at least in the short run and in parts of their existence, if the government were to lose power. Quite naturally, this dependency tends to reduce resistance and increase support. Exploitation may still seem reprehensible, but it is less so if one also happens to be someone who at least on some fronts is a legal benefactor of such actions. In recognition of this corruptive influence on public opinion, then, states increasingly become engaged in redistributive policies. The share of government expenditure for civilian spending compared to military spending and pure government consumption increases. The latter expenditures can still increase steadily in absolute terms, and they have indeed done so practically everywhere to this day, but they lose importance everywhere relative to expenditures allocated to redistributionist measures. 41 Depending on the particular conditions of public opinion, such redistributionist policies typically simultaneously assume one of two forms and frequently, as in the case of Prussia both: On the one hand the form of Sozialpolitik, of so-called welfare reforms, generally involving an income redistribution from the “haves” among producers to the “have-nots,” and on the other hand that of business cartelizations and regulations, generally implying a redistribution from productive “have-nots” or “not-yet-haves” to the established “already-haves.” With the introduction of a Sozialpolitik an appeal is made to egalitarian sentiments and a substantial part of it can be corrupted into accepting state exploitation in exchange for the state’s enforcement of “social justice.” With the introduction of a policy of business cartelization and regulation one appeals to conservative feelings, particularly among the bourgeois establishment, and it can be brought to accept the state’s noncontractual appropriations in exchange for its commitment to the preservation of a status quo. Egalitarian socialism and conservatism are thus transformed into statist ideologies. They compete with each other in the sense that they advocate somewhat different patterns of redistribution, but their competitive efforts converge and integrate in joint support for statism and statist redistribution." Hanns Herman Hoppe.
Posted on: Sat, 06 Jul 2013 14:36:28 +0000
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