Hans-Hermann Hoppe - Democracy - The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order

Acknowledgments

Most of the following studies have grown out of speeches delivered at various conferences sponsored by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and the Center for Libertarian Studies. Several of them have been published previously at different locations and in various translations. However, for the present occasion all of them have been systematically revised and substantially enlarged. I thank Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr., president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and Burton S. Blumert, president of the Center for Libertarian Studies, for their continual support, financially and personally, in developing and elaborating the ideas presented here.

Others who afforded me a forum to express and test my ideas and thus contributed to the present work include Cristian Comanescu, Robert Nef, Gerard Radnitzky, Jiri Schwarz, Jesus Huerta de Soto, and Josef Sima. Thanks go to them, as well as to an anonymous benefactor for his ongoing financial support.

For many years I have been blessed with the friendship of Walter Block, David Gordon, Jeffrey Herbener, Guido Hiilsmann, Stephan Kinsella, Ralph Raico, and Joseph Salerno. While none of them can be held responsible for any of my ideas, all of them, through suggestions and criticisms in countless conversations as well as their own scholarly writings, have exercised an indelible effect on my thinking.

Even more important has been the influence of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. My intellectual debt to their work is notable and, I can only hope, has been dutifully and adequately acknowledged throughout the following studies. To Murray N. Rothbard, with whom I was fortunate to have been closely associated during the last decade of his life, I further owe a profound personal debt. His friendship, and his example of moral courage and of the ability to stay kind, and indeed cheerfully optimistic in the face even of seemingly overwhelming adversity, have deeply and lastingly affected my own conduct and outlook on life.

Last but not least, I thank my wife, Margaret Rudelich Hoppe, not just for assuming for more than twenty years now the thankless task of editing my English writings, but for always finding the time and energy, in between her work, household, and care for our two teenage children, to provide me with encouragement, comfort, and happiness.

Introduction

World War I marks one of the great watersheds of modern history. With its end the transformation of the entire Western world from monarchical rule and sovereign kings to democratic-republican rule and sovereign people that began with the French Revolution was completed. Until 1914, only three republics had existed in EuropeFrance, Switzerland, and after 1911, Portugal; and of all major European monarchies only the United Kingdom could be classified as a parliamentary system, i.e., one in which supreme power was vested in an elected parliament. Only four years later, after the United States had entered the European war and decisively determined its outcome, monarchies all but disappeared, and Europe along with the entire world entered the age of democratic republicanism.

In Europe, the militarily defeated Romanovs, Hohenzollerns, and Habsburgs had to abdicate or resign, and Russia, Germany, and Austria became democratic republics with universalmale and femalesuffrage and parliamentary governments. Likewise, all of the newly created successor states with the sole exception of Yugoslavia adopted democratic republican constitutions. In Turkey and Greece, the monarchies were overthrown. And even where monarchies remained nominally in existence, as in Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries, monarchs no longer exercised any governing power. Universal adult suffrage was introduced, and all government power was vested in parliaments and "public" officials.

The world-historic transformation from the ancien regime of royal or princely rulers to the new democratic-republican age of popularly elected or chosen rulers may be also characterized as that from Austria and the Austrian way to that of America and the American way. This is true for several reasons. First, Austria initiated the war, and America brought it to a close. Austria lost, and America won. Austria was ruled by a monarchEmperor Franz Josephand America by a democratically elected presidentProfessor Woodrow Wilson. More importantly, however, World War I was not a traditional war fought over limited territorial objectives, but an ideological one; and Austria and America respectively were (and were perceived as such by the contending parties) the two countries that most clearly embodied the ideas in conflict with each other.1

World War I began as an old-fashioned territorial dispute. However, with the early involvement and the ultimate official entry into the war by the United States in April 1917, the war took on a new ideological dimension. The United States had been founded as a republic, and the democratic principle, inherent in the idea of a republic, had only recently been carried to victory as the result of the violent defeat and devastation of the secessionist Confederacy by the centralist Union government. At the time of World War I, this triumphant ideology of an expansionist democratic republicanism had found its very personification in then U.S. President Wilson. Under Wilson's administration, the European war became an ideological missionto make the world safe for democracy and free of dynastic rulers. When in March 1917 the U.S.allied Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate and a new democratic-republican government was established in Russia under Kerensky, Wilson was elated. With the Czar gone, the war had finally become a purely ideological conflict: of good against evil. Wilson and his closest foreign policy advisors, George D. Herron and Colonel House, disliked the Germany of the Kaiser, the aristocracy, and the military elite. But they hated Austria. As Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn has characterized the views of Wilson and the American Left, "Austria was far more wicked than Germany. It existed in contradiction of the Mazzinian principle of the national state, it had inherited many traditions as well as symbols from the Holy Roman Empire (double-headed eagle, black-gold colors, etc.); its dynasty had once ruled over Spain (another bite noire); it had led the Counter-Reformation, headed the Holy Alliance, fought against the Ris orgimento, suppressed the Magyar rebellion under Kossuth (who had a monument in New York City), and morally supported the monarchical experiment in Mexico. Habsburgthe very name evoked memories of Roman Catholicism, of the Armada, the Inquisition, Metternich, Lafayette jailed at Olmutz, and Silvio Pellico in Briinn's Spielberg fortress. Such a state had to be shattered, such a dynasty had to disappear."2

1For a brilliant summary of the causes and consequences of World War I see Ralph Raico, "World War I: The Turning Point," in The Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories, John V. Denson, ed. (New Brunswick, NE: Transaction Publishers, 1999).

2Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Leftism Revisited: From de Sade to Pol Pot (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1990), p. 210; on Wilson and Wilsonianism see further Murray N. Rothbard, "World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals," Journal of Liber tarian Studies 9, no. 1 (1989); Paul Gottfried, "Wilsonianism: The Legacy that Won't Die," Journal of Libertarian Studies 9, no. 2 (1990); idem, "On Liberal and Democratic Nationhood," Journal of Libertarian Studies 10, no. 1 (1991); Robert A. Nisbet, The Present Age (New York: Harper and Row, 1988).