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[The Political
Economy of War, a 5-week online course at the Mises
Academy, runs March 15 – April 18. You can enroll
online.]
It is a testament to the power of
government propaganda that several generations of self-described
conservatives have held as their core belief that war and militarism are
consistent with limited, constitutional government. These conservatives think
they are "defending freedom" by supporting every military adventure
that the state concocts. They are not.
Even just, defensive wars
inevitably empower the state far beyond anything any strict constructionist
would approve of. Prowar conservatives, in other
words, are walking contradictions. They may pay lip service to limited
constitutional government, but their prowar
positions belie their rhetoric.
"War is the health of the
state," as Randolph Bourne said in his famous essay of that title. Statism, moreover, means central planning, heavy
taxation, fascist or socialist economics, attacks on free speech and other
civil liberties, and the suffocation and destruction of private enterprise.
Classical liberals have always understood this, but conservatives never have.
(Neoconservatives either don't understand it or don't care.)
Thus, you have the celebrated
neoconservative writer Victor Davis Hanson writing in the December 2, 2009,
issue of Imprimis that antiwar activism and
other "factors" that make people "reluctant" to resort to
war are "lethal combinations" that supposedly threaten the
existence of society. Hanson was merely repeating the conservative party line
first enunciated by the self-proclaimed founder of the modern conservative
(really neoconservative) movement, William F. Buckley Jr. Murray Rothbard
quoted Buckley as saying in the January 25, 1952 issue of Commonweal
magazine that the Cold War required that we have got to accept Big Government
for the duration — for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be
waged … except through the instrumentality of a totalitarian
bureaucracy within our shores.… [We must support] large armies and air
forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards and the
attendant centralization of power in Washington.
"We" must advocate the
destruction of the free society in the name of defending the free society,
said "Mr. Conservative," a former CIA employee.
In reality, antiwar
"factors" are a threat only to the
military/industrial/congressional complex, which profits from war; they are
not a threat to society as a whole. In fact, quite the opposite is true.
Seeing through the dense murk of
such war propaganda is one of the purposes of my five-week, online Mises Academy course The Political
Economy of War, which begins on March 15. Students will learn
about the economics and politics of war from some of the giants of classical
liberalism, such as Ludwig von Mises, Frederic Bastiat, Lionell Robbins,
Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman, Robert Higgs, and
others. Among the topics to be discussed are
·
Why capitalism is the very opposite of
war
·
The economic causes of war
·
Why nationalism is always a threat to
peace and prosperity
·
Why Marx was wrong about war and
imperialism, but the Austrian economists got it right
·
Why and how war is the health of the
state, always ratcheting up governmental power at the expense of individual
liberty and prosperity
·
The role of free trade in deterring war
·
The evils of military conscription
·
How war cripples a nation's economy,
benefiting only a small group of war profiteers in the process
·
How the state employs the Fed to hide and
disguise the costs of war
·
The role of statist intellectuals in
promoting war precisely because they, too, understand that war is the health
of the state
·
Why conservatives love war and the state
·
The dangerous myth that democracy
promotes peace
·
Private alternatives to a massive
"national-defense" establishment
·
What is a just war?
Each class will consist of a
45–50 minute lecture followed by 30 minutes of Q&A with students.
My lectures will cover the topics listed on the syllabus for the course, but
will be more than rehashes of the readings that are listed — I will
concentrate on both my understanding of the readings (and other literature)
and my own research and writings.
The importance of understanding the
political economy of war is perhaps illustrated by this passage from Randolph
Bourne's famous essay:
War is a vast complex of
life-destroying and life-crippling forces. If the State's chief function is
war, then it is chiefly concerned with coordinating and developing the powers
and techniques which make for destruction. And this means not only the actual
and potential destruction of the enemy, but of the nation at home as well.
For the very existence of a State in a system of States means that the nation
lies always under a risk of war and invasion, and the calling away of energy
into military pursuits means a crippling of the productive and life-enhancing
processes of the national life.
Ludwig von Mises
expressed a similar sentiment in Human Action,
when he wrote,
What distinguishes man from animals
is the insight into the advantages that can be derived from cooperation under
the division of labor. Man curbs his innate instinct of aggression in order
to cooperate with other human beings. The more he wants to improve his
material well-being, the more he must expand the system of the division of
labor. Concomitantly he must more and more restrict the sphere in which he
resorts to military action. The emergence of the international division of
labor requires the total abolition of war.…
This philosophy is, of course,
incompatible with statolatry.[1]
These two quotes give one an
indication of why those individuals who help the public to become reluctant
to support war are more likely to be heroes of society as opposed to the
"lethal combinations" of neoconservative folklore.
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