Omnipotent Government. Людвиг фон Мизес
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of the opppressed will overthrow it sooner or later, even if it were to succeed for some time. But the Nazis have not even the chance to succeed for a short time. Their assault is doomed.
The present crisis of human civilization has its focal point in Germany. For more than half a century the Reich has been the disturber of the peace. The main concern of European diplomacy, in the thirty years preceding the first World War, was to keep Germany in check by various schemes and tricks. But for German bellicosity, neither the Czars’ craving for power nor the antagonisms and rivalries of the various nationalities of southeastern Europe would have seriously disturbed the world’s peace. When the devices of appeasement broke down in 1914, the forces of hell burst forth.
The fruits of the victory of the Allies were lost by the shortcomings of the peace treaties, by the faults of the postwar policies, and by the ascendancy of economic nationalism. In the turmoil of these years between the two wars, when every nation was eager to inflict as much harm on other nations as possible, Germany was free to prepare a more tremendous assault. But for the Nazis, neither Italy nor Japan would be a match for the United Nations.2 This new war is a German war as was the first World War.
It is impossible to conceive the fundamental issues of this most terrible of all wars ever fought without an understanding of the main facts of German history. A hundred years ago the Germans were quite different from what they are today. At that time it was not their ambition to surpass the Huns and to outdo Attila. Their guiding stars were Schiller and Goethe, Herder and Kant, Mozart and Beethoven. Their leitmotiv was liberty, not conquest and oppression. The stages of the process which transformed the nation once styled by foreign observers as that of the poets and thinkers into that of ruthless gangs of the Nazi Storm Troops ought to be known by everybody who wants to mold his own judgment on current world political affairs and problems. To understand the springs and tendencies of Nazi aggressiveness is of the highest importance both for the political and military conduct of the war and for the shaping of a durable postwar order. Many mistakes could have been avoided and many sacrifices spared by a better and clearer insight into the essence and the forces of German nationalism.
It is the task of the present book to trace the outlines of the changes and events which brought about the contemporary state of German and European affairs. It seeks to correct many popular errors which sprang from legends badly distorting historical facts and from doctrines misrepresenting economic developments and policies. It deals both with history and with fundamental issues of sociology and economics. It tries not to neglect any point of view the elucidation of which is necessary for a full description of the world’s Nazi problem.
In the history of the last two hundred years we can discern two distinctive ideological trends. There was first the trend toward freedom, the rights of man, and self-determination. This individualism resulted in the fall of autocratic government, the establishment of democracy, the evolution of capitalism, technical improvements, and an unprecedented rise in standards of living. It substituted enlightenment for old superstitions, scientific methods of research for inveterate prejudices. It was an epoch of great artistic and literary achievements, the age of immortal musicians, painters, writers, and philosophers. And it brushed away slavery, serfdom, torture, inquisition, and other remnants of the dark ages.
In the second part of this period individualism gave way to another trend, the trend toward state omnipotence. Men now seem eager to vest all powers in governments, i.e., in the apparatus of social compulsion and coercion. They aim at totalitarianism, that is, conditions in which all human affairs are managed by governments. They hail every step toward more government interference as progress toward a more perfect world; they are confident that the governments will transform the earth into a paradise. Characteristically, nowadays in the countries furthest advanced toward totalitarianism even the use of the individual citizen’s leisure time is considered as a task of the government. In Italy dopolavoro and in Germany Freizeitgestaltung are regular legitimate fields of government interference. To such an extent are men entangled in the tenets of state idolatry that they do not see the paradox of a government-regulated leisure.
It is not the task of this book to deal with all the problems of statolatry or etatism. Its scope is limited to the treatment of the consequences of etatism for international relations. In our age of international division of labor, totalitarianism within several scores of sovereign national governments is self-contradictory. Economic considerations are pushing every totalitarian government toward world domination. The Soviet government is by the deed of its foundation not a national government but a universal government, only by unfortunate conditions temporarily prevented from exercising its power in all countries. Its official name does not contain any reference to Russia. It was the aim of Lenin to make it the nucleus of a world government; there are in every country parties loyal only to the Soviets, in whose eyes the domestic governments are usurpers. It is not the merit of the Bolsheviks that these ambitious plans have not succeeded up to now and that the expected world revolution has not appeared. The Nazis have not changed the official designation of their country, the Deutsches Reich. But their literary champions consider the Reich the only legitimate government, and their political chiefs openly crave world hegemony. The intellectual leaders of Japan have been imbued at European universities with the spirit of etatism, and, back home, have revived the old tenet that their divine Emperor, the son of Heaven, has a fair title to rule all peoples. Even the Duce, in spite of the military impotence of his country, proclaimed his intention to reconstruct the ancient Roman Empire. Spanish Falangists babble about a restoration of the domain of Philip II.
In such an atmosphere there is no room left for the peaceful coöperation of nations. The ordeal through which mankind is going in our day is not the outcome of the operation of uncontrollable natural forces. It is rather the inevitable result of the working of doctrines and policies popular with millions of our contemporaries.
However, it would be a fateful mistake to assume that a return to the policies of liberalism abandoned by the civilized nations some decades ago could cure these evils and open the way toward peaceful coöperation of nations and toward prosperity. If Europeans and the peoples of European descent in other parts of the earth had not yielded to etatism, if they had not embarked upon vast schemes of government interference with business, our recent political, social, and economic disasters could have been avoided. Men would live today under more satisfactory conditions and would not apply all their skill and all their intellectual powers to mutual extermination. But these years of antagonism and conflict have left a deep impression on human mentality, which cannot easily be eradicated. They have marked the souls of men, they have disintegrated the spirit of human coöperation, and have engendered hatreds which can vanish only in centuries. Under present conditions the adoption of a policy of outright laissez faire and laissez passer on the part of the civilized nations of the West would be equivalent to an unconditional surrender to the totalitarian nations. Take, for instance, the case of migration barriers. Unrestrictedly opening the doors of the Americas, of Australia, and of Western Europe to immigrants would today be equivalent to opening the doors to the vanguards of the armies of Germany, Italy, and Japan.
There is no other system which could safeguard the smooth coördination of the peaceful efforts of individuals and nations but the system today commonly scorned as Manchesterism. We may hope—although such hopes are rather feeble—that the peoples of the Western democratic world will be prepared to acknowledge this fact, and to abandon their present-day totalitarian tendencies. But there can be no doubt that to the immense majority of men militarist ideas appeal much more than those of liberalism. The most that can be expected for the immediate future is the separation of the world into two sections: a liberal, democratic, and capitalist West with about one quarter of the total world population, and a militarist and totalitarian East embracing the much greater part of the earth’s surface and its population. Such a state of affairs will force upon the West policies of defense which will seriously hamper its efforts to make life more civilized and economic conditions