War—–The Birth And Health Of The State
By Dan Sanchez
April 22, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - As I mentioned in my talk “How
the Fed Feeds War,” this propensity is not lost on those in
government, which explains why so many of them are so wont to start and expand
wars. War is a pressure point on the body politic which the government strikes
to disable resistance and obtain submission. By repeatedly striking that nerve,
and thereby inducing war fever and triggering fight-or-flight, a government
continually renews its subject population’s sense of alarm and dependence, its
pliability and support.
Thus it has ever been, for as I propounded in my
essay, “
War is the Birth of the
State,” government owes its very origin to this effect. As Herbert
Spencer
wrote:
“…Government is begotten of [martial] aggression. (…)
…at first recognized but temporarily during leadership in
war, the authority of a chief is permanently established by continuity of
war; and grows strong where successful war ends in subjection of
neighbouring tribes.”
This is the tribe transforming from a community of
families into a ravaging horde and a stampeding herd under the direction of its
chief as herdsman.
And the subjected “neighbouring tribes” are also
brought into the fold. Interestingly, according to Franz Oppenheimer, the
conquering people who become herders of beast-like men, in general, are
previously herders of literal beasts. The primordial rise of the conquering
State was largely the story of nomadic herdsmen first marauding, then extorting,
and then finally ruling settled agricultural populations.
With these conquered peasants too, it was “foreign
threats” that transformed them from proud, resisting men into docile herd
animals. It was war and the threat of war that transmuted naked exploitation
into “government.” A settled plunderer will naturally fend off rival plunderers,
just as a shepherd will ward off wolves: not for the sake of his flock per se,
but for the sake of his wool and mutton. And so, as Oppenheimer
wrote:
“The peasants become accustomed, when danger threatens, to
call on the herdsmen, whom they no longer regard as robbers and murderers,
but as protectors and saviors.”
Thus, thanks to the panic of the spooked herd,
“plunder” becomes “tribute” becomes “patriotic taxes for national defense” under
that first of all protection rackets called the State.
In a sense, war sustains the State during “peacetime” as well.
This is especially true for modern welfare democracies (“welfare” being defined
so as to include corporate welfare). Earlier States, like the primordial ones
discussed above, were characterized by what Frédéric Bastiat called “limited
legal plunder,” under which “The few plunder the many.” Modern States, on the
other hand, are characterized by what Bastiat called “universal legal plunder,”
under which “Everybody plunders everybody.” As Bastiat
explained:
“Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they
are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those
who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter — by
peaceful or revolutionary means — into the making of laws. According to
their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of
two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power:
Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in
it.
Woe to the nation when this latter purpose prevails among
the mass victims of lawful plunder when they, in turn, seize the power to
make laws! Until that happens, the few practice lawful plunder upon the
many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law
is limited to a few persons. But then, participation in the making of law
becomes universal. And then, men seek to balance their conflicting interests
by universal plunder. Instead of rooting out the injustices found in
society, they make these injustices general. As soon as the plundered
classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against
other classes. They do not abolish legal plunder. (This objective would
demand more enlightenment than they possess.) Instead, they emulate their
evil predecessors by participating in this legal plunder, even though it is
against their own interests.”
Bastiat concluded:
“The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone
at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the
pretense of organizing it.”
And elsewhere, Bastiat
wrote:
“Government is the great fiction through which everybody
endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”
Rather than “live and let live,” which according to
Bourne, is what individuals do in a true state of peace, most people in a
welfare democracy (including especially crony capitalists), corrupted as they
are by access to the State machinery of compulsion, are bent on subsisting
extractively on each other. As Bastiat characterized it, the modern State is a
plundering, Hobbesian “war of all against all” sublimated into a seemingly
genteel, orderly process. The law of the jungle is instituted and regularized
under the mantle of the rule of law.
Just as military foreign wars do, this “war by other
means” against domestic enemies causes the people to regress toward herd-minded
animality. In order to attain the strength in numbers necessary to achieve
fleeting victories in this war, people flock together as “interest groups”, or
“herds within the herd,” which the government mobilizes against each other in
the reciprocal pursuit of legal plunder and coercion. Decency and goodwill
toward those outside the sub-herd go by the board as people embrace what Ludwig
von Mises called “
warfare sociology”:
the belief that those within a herd cannot gain except at the expense of another
herd.
In Oppenheimer’s terms, “the economic means” of
acquiring wealth (production and exchange) give way to “the political means”
(coercion and plunder). In Mises’s terms, “social competition” gives way to
“biological competition.” People look upon those outside their herd, less as
fellow human beings and potential partners in commerce and friendship, and more
the way a lion looks at a zebra (something to feed on) or a jackal looks at a
lion (something to snatch from).
By presenting them with easy access to the bestial
means of aggrandizement, as well as the necessity to defend against those who
use those means against them, the government makes people prone to
fight-or-flight responses toward out-group others: like a predator transfixed
with hunger at the sight of its prey, or like that prey transfixed with terror
at the sight of a predator.
The herd mind manifests vividly, not only in war
rallies, but in political rallies, where rival herds low and bray against each
other. At these rallies, fevered minds are filled, not only with “foreign
menaces,” but various domestic ones: “welfare bums,” “selfish businessmen,” “the
gay agenda,” “bigoted shopkeepers,” “droves of ‘illegals,’ “gentrification,”
“urban thugs,” etc.
Through the government, each herd/horde plunders and
persecutes by proxy, and is plundered and persecuted in turn. As the sole
apparatus for legal plunder, the government takes a cut of the loot for itself
for each theft it facilitates. And anger more properly directed at the
government is diverted toward domestic enemy herds. In fact each herd becomes
deeply wedded to the government as its chief implement for attacking and
defending against its foes. And in order to achieve the unity necessary to
realize its numerical strength, each herd rallies behind its “champions” in
government and the political class.
Thus, this kind of sublimated war is also the
“health of the State.” The herd mind that reaches its apogee in times of
international military conflict is continually activated even in “peacetime” by
the modern government keeping its subject populace in a managed, chronic state
of low-grade civil war.
This analysis fits well with Bourne’s broadest
definition of the State. At one point he defines it as follows:
“The State is the organization of the herd to act
offensively or defensively against another herd similarly organized.”
What is war but the mobilization (“organization”) of
multitudes (“herds”) against each other in offense and defense? So Bourne’s
definition may be fairly rephrased as simply: “The State is war.”
War is the birth, the health, the very essence of the State.
David Stockman’s Contra Corner
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