Omnipotent Government. Людвиг фон Мизес
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It is not a sign of hostility to the members of any class, pressure group, or organization to try to point out wherein they were mistaken and how they have contributed to the present unsatisfactory state of affairs. The main task of contemporary social science is to defy the taboo by which the established doctrines seek to protect their fallacies and errors against criticism. He who, in the face of the tremendous catastrophe whose consequences cannot yet be completely seen, still believes that there are some doctrines, institutions, or policies beyond criticism, has not grasped the meaning of the portents.
Let the example of Germany stand as a warning to us. German Kultur was doomed on the day in 1870 when one of the most eminent German scientists—Emil du Bois-Reymond—could publicly boast, without meeting contradiction, that the University of Berlin was “the intellectual bodyguard of the house of Hohenzollern.” Where the universities become bodyguards and the scholars are eager to range themselves in a “scientific front,” the gates are open for the entry of barbarism. It is vain to fight totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods. Freedom can only be won by men unconditionally committed to the principles of freedom. The first requisite for a better social order is the return to unrestricted freedom of thought and speech.
Whoever wishes to understand the present state of political affairs must study history. He must know the forces which gave rise to our problems and conflicts. Historical knowledge is indispensable for those who want to build a better world.
Unfortunately the nationalists approach history in another temper. For them the past is not a source of information and instruction but an arsenal of weapons for the conduct of war. They search for facts which can be used as pretexts and excuses for their drives for aggression and oppression. If the documents available do not provide such facts, they do not shrink from distorting truth and from falsifying documents.
In the early nineteenth century a Czech forged a manuscript in order to prove that his people’s medieval ancestors had already reached a high stage of civilization and had produced fine literary works. For many decades Czech scholars fanatically asserted the authenticity of this poem, and for a long time the official curriculum of the Czech state gymnasiums of old Austria made its reading and interpretation the main topic in the teaching of Czech literature. About fifty years later a German forged the Ura Linda Chronicle in order to prove that the “Nordics” created a civilization older and better than that of any other people. There are still Nazi professors who are not ready to admit that this chronicle is the clumsy forgery of an incompetent and stupid backwoodsman. But let us assume for the sake of argument that these two documents are authentic. What could they prove for the nationalists’ aspirations? Do they support the claim of the Czechs to deny autonomy to several million Germans and Slovaks, or the claim of the Germans to deny autonomy to all Czechs?
There is, for instance, the spurious dispute as to whether Nicholas Copernicus was a Pole or a German. The documents available do not solve the problem. It is at any rate certain that Copernicus was educated in schools and universities whose only language was Latin, that he knew no other mathematical and astronomical books than those written in Latin or Greek, and that he himself wrote his treatises in Latin only. But let us assume for the sake of argument that he really was the son of parents whose language was German. Could this provide a justification for the methods applied by the Germans in dealing with the Poles? Does it exculpate the German schoolteachers who—in the first decade of our century—flogged small children whose parents objected to the substitution of the German catechism for the Polish catechism in the schools of Prussia’s Polish provinces? Does it today entitle the Nazis to slaughter Polish women and children?
It is futile to advance historical or geographical reasons in support of political ambitions which cannot stand the criticism of democratic principles. Democratic government can safeguard peace and international coöperation because it does not aim at the oppression of other peoples. If some peoples pretend that history or geography gives them the right to subjugate other races, nations, or peoples, there can be no peace.
It is unbelievable how deep-rooted these vicious ideas of hegemony, domination, and oppression are even among the most distinguished contemporaries. Señor Salvador de Madariaga is one of the most internationally minded of men. He is a scholar, a statesman, and a writer, and is perfectly familiar with the English and French languages and literatures. He is a democrat, a progressive, and an enthusiastic supporter of the League of Nations and of all endeavors to make peace durable. Yet his opinions on the political problems of his own country and nation are animated by the spirit of intransigent nationalism. He condemns the demands of the Catalans and the Basques for independence, and advocates Castilian hegemony for racial, historical, geographical, linguistic, religious, and economic considerations. It would be justifiable if Sr. Madariaga were to refute the claims of these linguistic groups on the ground that it is impossible to draw undisputed border lines and that their independence would therefore not eliminate but perpetuate the causes of conflict; or if he were in favor of a transformation of the Spanish state of Castilian hegemony into a state in which every linguistic group enjoyed the freedom to use its own idiom. But this is not at all the plan of Sr. Madariaga. He does not advocate the substitution of a supernational government of the three linguistic groups, Castilians, Catalans, and Basques, for the Castile-dominated state of Spain. His ideal for Spain is Castilian supremacy. He does not want “Spain to let go the work of centuries in one generation.”* However, this work was not an achievement of the peoples concerned; it was the result of dynastic intermarriage. Is it right to object to the claims of the Catalans that in the twelfth century the Count of Barcelona married the King of Aragon’s daughter and that in the fifteenth century the King of Aragon married the Queen of Castile?
Sr. Madariaga goes even further and denies to the Portuguese the right of autonomy and statehood. For “the Portuguese is a Spaniard with his back to Castile and his eyes on the Atlantic Sea.”* Why, then, did not Spain absorb Portugal too? To this Sr. Madariaga gives a strange answer: “Castile could not marry both east and west at one time”; perhaps Isabel, “being a woman after all,... preferred Ferdinand’s looks to Alfonso’s, for of such things, also, history is made.”†
Sr. Madariaga is right in quoting an eminent Spanish author, Ángel Ganivet, to the effect that a union of Spain and Portugal must be the outcome “of their own free will,”‡ But the trouble is that the Portuguese do not long for Castilian or Spanish over-lordship.
Still more amazing are Sr. Madariaga’s views on Spain’s colonial and foreign affairs. Speaking of the American colonies, he observes that the Spanish monarchy organized them “faithful to its guiding principle—the fraternity of all men.”§ However, Bolivar, San Martin, and Morelos did not like this peculiar brand of fraternity. Then Sr. Madariaga tries to justify Spanish aspirations in Morocco by alluding to Spain’s “position which history, geography and inherent destiny seemed obviously to suggest.”‖ For an unbiased reader there is hardly any difference between such an “inherent destiny” and the mystical forces to which Messrs. Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin refer in annexing small countries. If “inherent destiny” justifies Spanish ambitions in Morocco, does it not in the same way support Russian appetites for the Baltic countries and Caucasian Georgia, German claims with regard to Bohemia and the Netherlands, Italy’s title to Mediterranean supremacy?
We cannot eradicate the past from our memories. But it is not the task of history to kindle new conflicts by reviving hatreds long since dead and by searching the archives for pretexts for new conflicts. We do not have to revenge crimes committed centuries ago by kings and conquerors; we have to build a new and better world order. It is without any relevance to the problems of our time whether the age-old antagonisms between the Russians and the Poles were initiated by Russian or by Polish aggression, or whether the atrocities committed in the Palatinate by the mercenaries of Louis XIV were more nefarious than those committed by the Nazis today. We have to prevent once and for all the repetition of such outrages. This aim alone can elevate the present war to the dignity of mankind’s most noble undertaking. The pitiless annihilation of Nazism is the first step toward freedom and peace.
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