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95 of 111 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"The first great book of the twenty-first century", July 18, 2002
Jack Rain, a reviewer on another site, used the phrase above to describe this book, and I unhesitatingly appropriate it for my review because it is so dead-on accurate. This is a very, very good, and very, very important, book. It's also a strong argument for the author's elevation to the pantheon of pro-freedom writers and philosophers, alongside Mises, Rothbard, Spooner, de Jasay, and a select few others.I have to admit that I found the first two chapters, especially, to be tough reading, and had to work through them several times. The economic analysis in the sections on time preference, for example -- while the outline of the argument becomes clear soon enough -- need extra time for all the shadings and implications to fall into place. After that, though, the truly important work begins, as Hoppe is engaged in nothing less than (to use his own words from a slightly different context) "an ideological campaign of delegitimizing the idea and institution of democratic government." In so doing, he undertakes a two-pronged approach of both demonstrating the failures of democracy (failures that are part of the very nature of democracy, and therefore irreparable) and the superiority of "natural order" -- a condition known by many other names too, including anarcho-capitalism and individualist or free-market anarchism. Personally, I responded most strongly to Hoppe's argument that "conservatives today must be antistatist libertarians and, equally important, [that] libertarians must be conservatives" [p. 189]. In so arguing, Hoppe gives us a thorough and revealing deconstruction of modern "conservatism" (so-called), showing how many self-styled conservatives are in fact merely the right wing of social democracy. He convincingly links the Buchananites, on the other hand, to "social nationalism or national socialism" (p. 192). In either case, the neo-cons, the Buchanan brigades, and also the so-called Christian Right have, in Hoppe's eyes, "not a trace of principled antistatism." Libertarians shouldn't start feeling too smug, however. Hoppe also calls for principled antistatists to retake libertarianism from the "lifestyle libertarians," who see antistatism as just one part of a comprehensive revolt against all social order and bourgeois culture (these folks were devastatingly described by Rothbard as "modal libertarians" or MLs -- a description Hoppe reprints in a footnote). He also targets "left libertarians" like the Cato Institute and Reason magazine, whose leading lights throw in the towel on the key question of State legitimacy, revel in the glamour and importance of life Inside the Beltway, and are reduced to arguing for reductions on the margin of an ever-expanding Leviathan. Hoppe's final chapter, "On the Impossibility of Limited Government and the Prospects for Revolution," expands on the philosophical basis for his earlier-defined strategy of personal secession. (It's important to note that Hoppe's "revolution" explicitly and firmly rejects violence: "[I]t is not necessary to take [government] over, to engage in violent battle against it, or even to lay hands on one's rulers. In fact, to do so would only reaffirm the principle of compulsion and aggressive violence underlying the current system and inevitably lead to the replacement of one government or tyrant by another. To the contrary, it is only necessary that one decide to withdraw from the compulsory union and reassume one's right to self protection. Indeed, it is essential that one proceed in no other way than by peaceful secession and noncooperation" [p. 91].) This book now occupies a place of honor on my freedom bookshelf. But more than that, it's a reference I will return to (and already have returned to) often. To borrow from yet another review (Schumann's of Chopin, this time): "Hats off, gentlemen -- a genius!"
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76 of 91 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating, November 9, 2001
Dr. Hans-Herman Hoppe is a professor of economics and fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. It is obvious from reading this work that his primary intellectual debt is to Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. Prof. Hoppe, following Rothbard, advocates anarcho-capitalism, or, as he calls it, "natural order." He is not a monarchist, but shows the many advantages of monarchy over democracy.As Prof. Hoppe tells us, both Rothbard and von Mises, although by no means supporting most of the changes in the twentieth century, held a generally favorable opinion of the change from monarchy to democracy. However, Prof. Hoppe shows that this transition was not at all favorable to the protection of civil rights and restricting the growth of government. In fact, just the opposite happened. Contemporaneous with this change, we have seen a decline in morals and individual responsibility. This is largely explained by Prof. Hoppe's fascinating discussion of time preference to democratic and monarchical governments. A monarchical government is more likely to enact policies similar to what an individual, unfettered by government, would do. Take for example immigration. A monarch, who in some sense "owns" the country, will establish an immigration policy that reflects his country's need for new citizens. He will ask what the immigrant can contribute to the economy, whether the person has good values, and whether he is likely to become a public charge. The democratic government will permit massive immigration, more concerned with social engineering and expanding the pool of voters who will support the welfare state. He also shows that, contrary to many supposed conservatives and libertarians, "free trade" doesn't required "free immigration." This is one of the most interesting books I've read in a while. It's hard to summarize all the valuable insights of Prof. Hoppe. In particular, his demonstration that a libertarian philosophy is most conducive to traditional morality was quite persuasive. I didn't completely agree with his attack on Patrick Buchanan and Samuel Francis, which I think exaggerated some of the least libertarian aspects of their thought.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Remarkable ideas, but too much repetitiveness and poor spatial coverage, January 31, 2008
Hans-Hermann Hoppe's "Democracy: The God That Failed" is a unique assessment of modern Western history based on the most radical strain of the Australian School. The Austrian School believes firmly that private property rights are the most essential component of a civilised society. In fact, from the Austrian perspective public ownership is the most extreme violation of natural rights.
In "Democracy: The God that Failed", Hoppe applies the theories of Murray Rothbard to government itself - something not done by previous Austrians. Hoppe analogises absolute monarchy to a privately owned government and a democracy to a public-owned government. He then uses classic Austrian theory to show a monarchy has an interest in maintaining the long-term welfare of its subjects because it expects to rule the country it rules forever via hereditary descent. A democratically elected ruler, on the other hand, does not own the country it rules and thus has no interest except immediate enrichment of politicians or those who elect them. As an illustration, Hoppe shows that taxes were always extremely low (under ten percent) under absolute monarchy, but have risen to around forty to fifty percent under democracy. Similarly, savings rates, which should naturally rise with economic growth, have fallen as people under democracy desire instant gratification. Fertility rates have drastically fallen as public welfare eats up the high taxes of democracies (and Stalinist or fascist dictatorships) and children lose their value. Interest rates, which Hoppe says will tend to zero with increasing "civilisation", have also risen since democratisation, whilst prices, which actually fell during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, have risen almost exponentially as democracies build up huge public debts to gratify the masses.
After considering the effect of democratisation as "decivilising", Hoppe then goes on to look at the reason why he views any form of public welfare state as unsustainable, thus utterly dismissing attempts at welfare reform. Instead he looks at the possibility of total privatisation of public assets and believes that could have caused a massive economic boom in the former Stalinist nations and undone the Western European welfare states as they aim to compete.
The last half of "Democracy: The God that Failed" is devoted to various aspects of "natural order" or "private property anarchy", which Hoppe believes to be an alternative to both democracy and absolute monarchy. He shows how "private property anarchy" with much more prosperity and higher civilisation than democracy allows would actually be an extremely exclusive society with little tolerance for dissent - because the owners decide what ideas are allowed and what are not. I can relate Hoppe very well to one highly critical analysis of the Catholic Church's doctrinal control system. Moreover, having become more sympathetic to that institution than ten years ago, I can understand the sort of society he would like without definitively being able to say it would work well.
Hoppe also has a good look at the failures of the nihilist anarchism so popular in the 1960s and 1970s. As I already know from my experience with student radicals, he shows that, for all its opposition to government, "left libertarianism" has exactly the short-sightedness of socialism. Hoppe also attacks praise by other Austrians of the original interpretation of the US Constitution, claiming it possesses the same problems all constitutions do, and in a related article showing that "limited government" as many believers in absolute monarchy theorised is quite impossible. The last chapter, rather less direct than most in "Democracy: The God that Failed", looks at private provision of defence and security. Hoppe shows that public provision of them - just like any service according to Austrian theory - means their value is not paid for and service is poor. In practice, I imagine this as literally user-pays security, which logically might means many victims of crime would not be able to compensate themselves.
Assessing this work, despite it not being unusual in size, is not easy. His illustration of the changes in social behaviour that have taken place since the democratisation of Europe is remarkably clear and consistent, but he completely ignores the relation of charitable giving to time preference. This I see as critical to understanding society's time preference. Arthur C. Brooks shows declining charity correlating much, much better with fertility reduction than declining savings, yet Hoppe does not write a word about changes in charitable giving.
Hoppe's perspective has the plus of being very clear and detailed. In some ways it is also persuasive, for instance in the way it suggests direct socialist democracy as advocated by the likes of Sandra Bloodworth and Tess Lee Ack is impossible because a nation's entire wealth would be destroyed and productivity eliminated. Although Hoppe does admit some democratisation was taking place beforehand "Democracy: The God that Failed" also contradicts popular viewpoints that democratisation was a necessary consequence of development by showing how the war contributed to it. His view of how an absolute monarch has interest in preservation and conservation of his kingdom echoes Jared Diamond's showing many monarchies much more effective at environmental protection than democracies. Oddly, Hoppe quite clearly contradicts Pat Buchanan's claim that European working classes were "socially conservative", and indeed shows Buchanan's whole program as utterly impossible. The theory that any form if big government inevitably leads to social liberalism is quite reasonable given the experience of not only Europe, but also Latin America and much of Asia.
Another point which I can agree with is the way in which warfare has changed as a result of democratisation to allow free attacks on civilians - though other sources say this began with the Russian Civil War rather than World War I and attribute this (either in a positive or negative way depending on ideology) to the threat of socialism and the response of fascism. However, Hoppe does not realise that few democracies have ever actually started a war and that governments or organisations who start modern wars are generally either Marxist, fascist or Muslim (e.g. September 11, 2001). Even if they are democratic, they are more often than not responses to organisation of the above three types.
Hoppe is oddly limited in his perspective. He discusses the US and its decline since the Civil War, but not Canada, which has become the epitome of a modern democracy since Quebec's "Quiet Revolution" - arguably the final triumph of "big government". He similarly ignores the democratisation of Japan after World War II, or the collapse of other Asian absolute monarchies in the twentieth century. Hoppe's godfather Mises apparently understood there to be essential differences between Asian and European absolute monarchies, creating a very worthy topic for further expansion.
From my own experience, I also wonder if it is not possible to expand Hoppe's three tiers of natural law - absolute monarchy - democracy to a greater number. Knowing with my experience in environmental science the effects of industrialisation on the value of Eurasia's main natural resource (fertile soils) I wonder why Hoppe did not compare theocratic nonhereditary monarchies (who as shown by Gregory XVI's ineffective ban on railways in the Papal States recognised industrialisation as devaluing their own property) with hereditary nontheocratic monarchs who never understood this. There is also the question of modern dictatorships, about which Hoppe makes no analogy as he does with absolute monarchy versus democracy.
Crucial here is the fact that Hoppe literally wastes the second chapter with a near-repetition of another - space that could have been used to look at any of the unanswered questions mentioned above. There is also a bit of repetition of other parts of the book in later chapters. One really does wonder why Hoppe was so unwilling to edit his essays to give room for unanswered questions that would have made "Democracy: The God that Failed" far more watertight in its theses.
Some critics have also pointed out that large-scale warfare did not being with democratisation and that World War I really was more than a territorial war before Wilson entered. This does not contradict Hoppe entirely, though - it merely questions him.
All in all, this is hard book to get over and has many interesting arguments. However, its repetitiveness and limited focus make me feel generous giving it three stars even with enough plausible ideas to be a wonderful book.
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