Ray Bradbury said, ""

A man neutral on the Iraq war

Isaiah Schwartz elaborated his theory of warfare at Anticollective.

He said:

A socialist country has a few major problems facing it at all times. 1) Usually if it gets too unbearable its people will try to escape to other countries around it 2)Their method of price fixation will lead to shortages and rationing which will bring into existence black markets bringing goods from other countries 3) The freer nations around it will eventually establish a much larger and more advance army this leads them open to attack and 4) Usually a socialist country will not want to trade with other nations so to get all the resources it needs it will have to bring more people and land into its domain. Based on these major problems a socialist nation has a large motivation to conquer its neighbors.

A capitalistic country in a free market world has very little to gain and much to lose from warfare, warfare is inherently wasteful and hurt the consumer good market. A capitalistic country in a world with unfree neighbors has a much different problem. The capitalistic country which we will call country A wants to trade goods and services with the socialist country which we will call B. Now history teaches us that generally this situation is very hard on A. Mostly because country B will have a tendance to nationalize A's industries, to not let citizens of A and citizens of B move freely between nations, to randomly tax imports from A, and generally interfere with the citizens of A. At the same time if A manages to continue trading with B chances are the power structure in B will begin to show cracks (refer to British colonial history of China).

Those members of a socialist commonwealth who abrogate to themselves the ability to substitute their plans for the plans of the rest of the population, by reducing interpersonal exchange through the expression of one will- their own- are put into the same position as an isolated economic actor. They are inherently incapable of economic calculation, and will, just as would an isolated individual, seek to extend the range of autarkic exchange. For Robinson Crusoe, this would mean forays deeper into the island, an extension of his will toward the utilization of more means of production toward satisfying his wants. For the governors of a socialist commonwealth, who use the bodies of men as means of production, this means the physical invasion of territory to extend the sphere of their will over all means of production, including humans and inanimate capital goods. 

The use of men as means of production reduces the sphere of decisions available to the domestic population and any captured population to one constant decision: obey or revolt.  So long as the expected psychic loss of revolution exceeds the expected psychic profit to be gained by capturing autonomy, the population will submit. It need not be said that to those populations neighboring a socialist commonwealth, the incentive to remain autonomous is going to be a hell of a lot stronger than the incentive to become clay in a bureaucrat's hands. 

Now, for a nation ordered on property rights and voluntary cooperation, the mere existence of a neighboring socialist commonwealth has the same praxeological characteristic as the existence of a known thug in the neighborhood: faced with the danger of criminal trespass and assault, the population will take measures to protect itself. To protect against trespass the population of the capitalist nation will take measures to prepare for war. There need enter no trade between the two, just as there is no need for a father to converse with a neighboring pedophile for him to take the precaution of buying a shotgun. Note that there need be no distinction between a Misesian state, a limited constitutional republic, or a Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist population. In both, the population will, by different means, view as more valuable than previously the means of protecting against assault- whether in the willingness to pay higher taxes, or the willingness to pay higher prices for security firms.

What Isaiah neglects is that, first of all, there can be no such thing as a socialist commonwealth. There can only exist approximations, nations which mimic the economic calculation of their freer neighbors.  There also exists no such thing currently as a national government fully respectful of property rights, or an anarcho-capitalist population. Every single government on Earth has expressed socialist tendencies through the attempted expansion of territory, blockades on trade, and curtailments of domestic rights.  Because of this, it is only appropriate to speak of degrees of socialist policies and free policies. It becomes at once clear that two neighboring nations, each embracing socialist policies, will mutually excite each other to war over the resources sought by the bureaucrats, citing economic justifications, while those nations which are relatively more free will cite the threat of violent usurpation of rights as a justification to war. The governing bodies of socialist nations cite tariffs or embargos as reason for war; the population of freer nations cite weapons of mass destruction as reason for war. 

The freer a nation is, the less cause it has to look at bad economics, and the more cause it has to look at mass graves, as a reason for waging war.

This holds true, as everything in praxeology must, for individuals. Those individuals who advocate property rights and voluntary cooperation, will tend to cite genocide, oppression, and military aggression as their reason for supporting a war, and will reject military action as a response to bad economics.  Thus, mass famine in North Korea or 1930's Russia, gas warfare in Iraq, genocide in the Sudan and Nazi Germany, violent invasion of Poland, etc, are given as justification for waging war against the oppressive regimes, by individuals advocating capitalism. Those individuals who reject property rights and voluntary cooperation, will tend to cite economic matters such as embargos or "national goals" as reasons for military action (or bureaucratic control through international organizations, in the case of nations like France with a negligible military and not enough testicular fortitude to outright invade another nation), and simultaneously deprecate the invasion of property rights as a reason for war. In American politics, this is seen in the contrasting reaction to the war in Iraq. The conservatives point to the mass graves of Saddam, the intelligence reporting weapons of mass destruction, the rape victims of Uday and Qusay, and the wood chippers. The liberals declare the war waged for profit by Halliburton, oil companies,  and other corporations, scarcely mention the oppression of Iraqis under the Baath regime, and often call for the destruction of Israel (directly or by supporting terrorist causes such as Hizbollah or the PLO) because of Israel's policies regarding the citizenship of "Palestinian" terrorists.

~~~

Update 8:57

It is worth noting that among libertarians there exists a large schism regarding the war in Iraq and war in general.  In this division, the debate largely focuses on the priority the people of a free nation should attach to injustices inflicted on the populations of other nations. Thus, two libertarians may agree on the horror of World War II, but one may claim (as has actually been done by a few) that the genocide of the entire Jewish population of Europe was not a cause for violent intervention. To the eyes of some libertarians, the moment a dictator begins to slaughter or threatens to, a free people has the option to violently intervene if they choose; to the eyes of others, only direct invasion warrents military intervention. Consider the consequences of an extreme position at each pole. If one holds to the former point of view in the extreme, Americans were justified in beating back the Nazi horde just for their Judenhass policies alone. If one holds to the latter point of view in the extreme, Americans would only have been justified in responded militarily to the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.  A fanatic in the former case would gladly shoot a Nazi in the face, a fanatic in the latter case would ignore the Nazi unless provoked directly.

Update 9:13

I bring to note that in the Declaration of Independance, of the 28 justifications for revolution,  all call to mind the invasion of property rights whether directly (the support of Indian rebellions by England, the quartering of troops, the plundering of merchant ships) or indirectly (the holding of mock trials for the English murderers of colonists, the suspension of assemblies, the trade barrier itself caused directly by the plundering and conscription of merchant ships)

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at August 28, 2005 18:53 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
politics, economics, philosophy

Comments open but moderated. I reserve permission to kill spammers on sight.

#1  30 August 2005 - 13:45

 

The comments section is difficult since the service I use doesn't let me edit HTML like that. Unless I re-add the code for each post every time I add a new one.

Your answer reminds me of the situation in 1984, George Orwell. However, a free nation's bureaucracy does have the option to intervene into what it claims to be a tyrranical nation, so as to create an unofficial colony, or at least have some form of influence. In this way it could tried to create a socialist puppet state while still keeping its home citizens free. However, I guess this could still be considered tyrranny by the colony's neighbors, but will it possess the same threat, as the home is still free?
Either way, thanks for visiting my site, you were the first commenter (no, there is no prize for that). Keep posting though.

Anonymous

#2  04 September 2005 - 21:18

 

You spelled my name wrong. Thats all I have to say.

Anonymous

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