DemocracyThe God That Failed (37 page)

isolation or aggression, depredation, and domination. That is, there must be a minimum of intelligence or rationality; and men—at least two of them—must have the sufficient moral strength to act on this insight and be willing to forego immediate gratification for even greater future satisfaction. But for intelligence and conscious will, writes Mises,

men would have forever remained deadly foes of one another, irreconcilable rivals in their endeavors to secure a portion of the scarce supply of means of sustenance provided by nature. Each man would have been forced to view all other men as his enemies; his craving for the satisfaction of his own appetites would have brought him into an implacable conflict with all his neighbors. No sympathy could possibly develop under such a state of affairs.
⁴

A member of the human race who is completely incapable of understanding the higher productivity of labor performed under a division of labor based on private property is not properly speaking a person (a
persona),
but falls instead in the same moral category as an animal—of either the harmless sort (to be domesticated and employed as a producer or consumer good, or to be enjoyed as a "free good") or the wild and dangerous one (to be fought as a pest). On the other hand, there are members of the human species who are capable of understanding the insight but who lack the moral strength to act accordingly. Such persons are either harmless brutes living outside of and separated from human society, or they are more or less dangerous criminals. They are persons who knowingly act wrongly and who besides having to be tamed or even physically defeated must also be punished in proportion to the severity of their crime to make them understand the nature of their wrongdoings and hopefully to teach them a lesson for the future. Human cooperation (society) can only prevail and advance as long as man is capable of subduing, taming, appropriating, and cultivating his physical and animalistic surroundings, and as long as he succeeds in suppressing crime, reducing it to a rarity by means of self-defense, property protection, and punishment.
⁵

⁴
Ibid,p.l44.

Rarely has the importance of cognition and rationality for the emergence and maintenance of society been more strongly emphasized than by Mises. He explains that one

may admit that in primitive man the propensity for killing and destroying and the disposition for cruelty were innate. We may also assume that under the conditions of earlier ages the inclination for aggression and murder was favorable to the preservation of life. Man was once a brutal beast But one must not forget that he was physically a weak animal;
he would not have been a match for the big beasts of prey if he had not been equipped with a peculiar weapon, reason. The fact that man is a reasonable being, that he therefore does not yield without inhibitions to every impulse, but arranges his conduct according to reasonable deliberation, must not be called unnatural from a zoological point of view. Rational conduct means that man, in face of the fact that he cannot satisfy all his impulses, desires, and appetites, foregoes the satisfaction of those which he considers less urgent. In order not to endanger the working of social cooperation, man is forced to abstain from satisfying those desires whose satisfaction would hinder establishment of societal institutions. There is no doubt that such a renunciation is painful. However, man has made his choice. He has renounced the satisfaction of some desires incompatible with social life and has given priority to the satisfaction of those desires which can be realized only or in a more plentiful way under a system of the division of labor This decision is not irrevocable and final. The choice of the fathers does not impair the sons' freedom to choose. They can reverse the resolution. Every day they can proceed to the transvaluation of values and prefer barbarism to civilization, or, as some authors say, the soul to the intellect, myths to reason, and violence to peace. But they must choose. It is impossible to have things incompatible with one another.
(Human
Ac
tion,
pp. 171-72)

II

As soon as these requirements are fulfilled, however, and as long as man, motivated by the knowledge of the higher physical productivity of a division of labor based on private property, is engaged in mutually beneficial exchanges, the "natural" forces of attraction arising from the dif
ferences in the sexes and the "natural" forces of repulsion or enmity arising from the differences between and even within the races, can be transformed into genuinely "social" relations. Sexual attraction can be transformed from copulation to consensual relations, mutual bonds, households, families, love, and affection.
⁶
(It testifies to the enormous
productivity of the family-household that no other institution has proven more durable or capable of producing such emotions!) And inter- and intraracial repulsion can be transformed from feelings of enmity or hostility to a preference for cooperating (trading) with one another only indirectly—from afar and physically separated and spatially segregated—rather than directly, as neighbors and associates.
⁷

See on this also Joseph T. Salerno, "Ludwig von Mises as Social Rationalist,"
Review
of
Austrian
Economics
4 (1990).

⁶
Within the frame of social cooperation," writes Mises,

there can emerge between members of society feelings of sympathy and friendship and a sense of belonging together. These feelings are the source of man's most delightful and most sublime experiences. They are the most precious adornment of life; they lift the animal species man to the heights of a really human existence. However, they are not, as some have asserted, the agents that have brought about social relationships. They are the fruits of social cooperation, they thrive only within its frame; they did not precede the establishment of social relations and are not the seeds from which they spring. (Ibid., p. 144)

"The mutual sexual attraction of male and female," Mises explains further,

Human cooperation—division of labor—based on the one hand on integrated family-households and on the other one on separated households, villages, tribes, nations, races, etc., wherein man's natural biological attractions and repulsions for and against one another are transformed into a mutually recognized system of spatial (geographical) allocation (of physical approximation and integration or of separation and segregation, and of direct or of indirect contact, exchange and trade), leads to improved standards of living, a growing population, further extensification and intensification of the division of labor, and increasing diversity and differentiation.
⁸

As a result of this development and an ever more rapid increase of goods and desires which can be acquired and satisfied only indirectly, professional traders, merchants, and trading centers will emerge. Merchants
and cities function as the mediators of the indirect exchanges between territorially separated households and communal associations and thus become the sociological and geographical locus and focus of intertribal or interracial association. It will be within the class of merchants in which racially, ethnically, or tribally mixed marriages are relatively most common; and since most people, of both reference groups, typically disapprove of such alliances, it will be the wealthier members of the merchant class who can afford such extravagances. However, even the members of the wealthiest merchant families will be highly circumspect in such endeavors. In order not to endanger their own position as a merchant, great care must be taken that every mixed marriage is, or at least appears to the relevant ethnicities to be a marriage between "equals." Consequently, the racial mixture brought on by the merchant class will more likely than not contribute to genetic "luxuration" (rather than genetic "pauperization").
⁹
Accordingly, it will be in the big cities as the centers of international trade and commerce, where mixed couples and their offspring typically reside, where members of different ethnicities, tribes, races, even if they do not intermarry, still come into regular direct personal contact with each other (in fact, that
they
do so is required by the fact that their respective tribesmen back home do
not
have to deal directly with more or less distasteful strangers), and where the most elaborate and highly developed system of physical and functional integration and segregation will arise.
¹⁰
It will also be in the big cities where,
as the subjective reflection of this complex system of spatio-functional allocation, citizens will develop the most highly refined forms of personal and professional conduct, etiquette, and style. It is the city that breeds civilization and civilized life.

is inherent in man's animal nature and independent of any thinking and theorizing. It is permissible to call it original, vegetative, instinctive, or mysterious;... However, neither cohabitation, nor what precedes it and follows, generates social cooperation and societal modes of life. The animals too join together in mating, but they have not developed social relations. Family life is not merely a product of sexual intercourse. It is by no means natural and necessary that parents and children live together in the way in which they do in the family. The mating relation need not result in a family organization. The human family is an outcome of thinking, planning, and acting. It is this fact which distinguishes it radically from those animal groups which we call
per
analogiam
animal families. (Ibid., p. 167)

⁷
On the significance of race and ethnicity, and especially on "genetic similarity and dissimilarity" as a source of mutual attraction and repulsion see J. Philippe Rushton,
Race,
Evolution,
and
Behavior
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995); idem, "Gene Culture, Co-Evolution and Genetic Similarity Theory: Implications for Ideology, Ethnic Nepotism, and Geopolitics,"
Politics
and
the
Life
Sciences
4 (1986); idem, "Genetic Similarity, Human Altruism, and Group Selection,"
Behav
ioral
and
Brain
Sciences
12 (1989); idem, "Genetic Similarity in Male Friendships,"
Ethology
and
Sociobiology
10 (1989); also Michael Levin,
Why
Race
Matters
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997); idem, "Why Race Matters: A Preview,"
Journal
of
Libertarian
Studies
12, no. 2 (1996).

⁸
See Murray N. Rothbard, "Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor," in idem,
Egalitarianism
as
a
Revolt
Against
Nature
and
Other
Essays
(Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000).

⁹
See Wilhelm Muhlmann,
Rassen,
Ethnien,
Kulturen.
Moderne
Ethnologie
(Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1964), pp. 93-97. In general, apart from the upper strata of the class of merchants, peaceful racial or ethnic mixing is typically restricted to members of the social upper-class, i.e., to nobles and aristocrats. Thus, the racially or ethnically least pure families are characteristically the leading royal dynasties.

¹⁰
For instance, Fernand Braudel has given the following description of the complex pattern of spatial separation and functional integration and the corresponding multiplicity of separate and competing jurisdictions developed in the great trading centers such as Antioch during the heyday of the Islamic civilization from the eighth to the twelfth century: At the city center

was the Great Mosque for the weekly sermon Nearby was the bazaar, i.e., the merchants' quarter with its streets and shops (the souk) and its caravanserais or warehouses, as well as the public baths . . . Artisans were grouped concentrically, starting from the Great Mosque: first, the makers and sellers of perfumes and incense, then the shops selling fabrics and rugs, the jewelers and food stores, and finally the humblest trades... curriers, cobblers, blacksmiths, potters, saddlers, dyers. Their shops marked the edges of the town In principle, each of these trades had its location fixed for all time. Similarly, the
maghzen
or Prince's quarter was in principle located on the outskirts of the city, well away
from riots or popular revolts. Next to it, and under its protection, was the
mellah
or Jewish quarter. The mosaic was completed by a very great variety of residential districts, divided by race and religion: there were forty-five in Antioch alone. "The town was a cluster of different quarters, all living in fear of massacre." So Western colonists nowhere began racial segregation—although they nowhere suppressed it. (Braudel,
A
History
of
Civilizations
[New York: Penguin Books, 1995], p. 66)

To maintain law and order within a big city, with its intricate pattern of physical and functional integration and separation, a great variety of jurisdictions, judges, arbitrators and enforcement agencies in addition to self-defense and private protection will come into existence. There will be what one might call
governance
in the city, but there will be no government (state).
¹¹
For a government to arise it is necessary that one of these judges, arbitrators, or enforcement agencies succeed in establishing himself as a monopolist. That is, he must be able to insist that no citizen can choose anyone but him as the judge or arbitrator of last resort, and he must successfully suppress any other judge or arbitrator from trying to assume the same role (thereby competing against him). More interesting than the question of what a government is, however, are the following: How is it possible that one judge can acquire a judiciary monopoly, given that other judges will naturally oppose any such attempt; and what specifically makes it possible, and what does it imply, to establish a monopoly of law and order in a big city, i.e., over a territory with ethnically, tribally, and/or racially mixed populations?

ⁿ
See Otto Brunner,
Sozialgeschichte
Europas
im
Mittelalter
(Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1984), chap. 8; Henri Pirenne,
Medieval
Cities
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969); Charles Tilly and Wim P. Blockmans, eds..
Cities
and
the
Rise
of
States
in
Europe,
1000-1800
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994); Boudewijn Bouckaert, "Between the Market and the State: The World of Medieval Cities," in
Values
and
the
Social
Order,
Vol. 3,
Voluntary
versus
Coercive
Orders,
Gerard Radnitzky, ed. (Aldershot, U.K.: Avebury, 1997). Incidentally, the much maligned Jewish
Ghettoes,
which were characteristic of European cities throughout the Middle Ages, were
not
indicative of an inferior legal status accorded to Jews or of anti-Jewish discrimination. To the contrary, the
Ghetto
was a place where Jews enjoyed complete self-government and where rabbinical law applied. See on this Guido Kisch,
The
Jews
in
Medieval
Germany
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942); also Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, "Hebrews and Christians,"
Rothbard-Rockzvell
Report
9, no. 4 (April 1998).