Hamilton vs. Kant on War and Peace

Democracy, Imperialism, Mercantilism, War
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As an Aristotelian libertarian, I’m not a big fan of Immanuel Kant, his philosophy in general, or his take on world peace.  But to say that I’m not a fan of Alexander Hamilton — that statist, bank centralizer, mercantilist, and crypto-monarchist — would be a vast understatement. (For more on what’s wrong with Hamilton, see Thomas DiLorenzo’s “What Hamilton Has Wrought” and Hamilton’s Curse.)

I discussed the democratic peace thesis and problems I see with the Kantian Triangle — resting on republican government, international trade, and international law and organizations — in my previous post, Triangulating Peace? Or, Three Foundations for Oppression? While trade is a peaceful activity and economic interdependence can promote peace among states, it can be perverted and used for corporatist and mercantilist ends by states and international governmental organizations (IGOs), which is why, though it pains me to say it, I must side with Hamilton’s take on the matter, excerpted from Federalist #6 below:

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Triangulating Peace? Or, Three Foundations for Oppression?

Corporatism, Democracy, Non-Fiction Reviews, War
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[The following is a revised version of a reaction paper I wrote for a graduate seminar in international conflict back in 2005.]

In Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations, Bruce Russet and John Oneal mount the most thorough defense of the democratic peace thesis I have yet seen. Indeed, they go beyond the democratic peace thesis to posit a Kantian peace consisting of the interrelated and reciprocal effects of democracy, economic interdependence, and international law and organizations. I am not without criticism, however.

I have always been skeptical of the democratic peace thesis, which posits that democratic states do not go to war with one another, in part because it seemed to me to be incomplete. Russet and Oneal attempt to shore up that incompleteness by emphasizing the pacifying effects of both bilateral and global economic interdependence as well as (though not unproblematically) international law and organizations.

Despite the impossibility of discovering empirical laws via inductive and statistical methods, it may be true that (liberal) democracies rarely go to war with one another and, ceteris paribus, might be less war prone than other states. But I am not confident this trend will hold for all times and places.1 Moreover, democracies may still be more likely to go to war with non-democracies for ideological reasons. “We’ve” got to make the world safe for democracy, after all.

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  1. Joanne Gowa, in Ballots and Bullets, argued that the democratic peace was an artifact of the Cold War; it appeared to be true only because Western, capitalist, democratic nations had a shared security interest against the Soviet Union. My professor for the above-mentioned seminar, David Sobek, argued that Gowa’s book suffers from methodological deficiencies, but said that he had been working on an article (I don’t know if it was ever published) that improved on Gowa’s methods and he was surprised to find her results confirmed. ↩

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Ecofascism in the Name of Fending Off Ecofascism

Corporatism, Democracy, Environment, Nanny Statism, The Left, Totalitarianism, Vulgar Politics
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Micah White at The Guardian writes of the growing danger of ecofascism or environmental authoritarianism. Some environmentalists, like James Lovelock and Pentti Linkola, want to put democracy on hold and/or return humanity world-wide to a primitive state of existence in order to combat global warming. Ironically, his proposal to fend off this growing danger is itself an example of the very thing he fears, though perhaps his proposal is motivated not entirely by environmental concerns but also by an independent dislike of consumerism.

White’s solution is to end the culture of rampant consumerism in the West. How does he propose to do this? Ah, now there’s the rub.

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(Statist) Politics as Household Management

Anti-Statism, Democracy, Libertarian Theory, Vulgar Politics
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In a previous post, Voting, Moral Hazard, and Like Buttons, I discussed the moral hazards of voting and why democracy does not legitimize the state or protect our liberty. I also discussed how statist democracy, particularly representative democracy, is manipulative and conducive to top-down central planning of society. (Statist) politics tends to reduce all basic social issues to problems requiring administrative manipulation. In this post, I’m going to delve into this issue further and draw upon insights by Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition1 to illustrate how (statist) politics is inherently an attempt to run society as one massive organization, organism, or machine.

Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the differences between action (praxis)2 and work – and between politics, which involves action, and fabrication or making (poi?sis), which involves work – has negative implications for the central planning of society that is characteristic of modern representative-democratic states. In particular, I have in mind her criticism of Plato, and to a lesser extent Aristotle, regarding their tendency to view society as a sort of organization and politics as the running of society as such an organization – or, in their words, politics as akin to household management. This fits with the tendency in many cultures to refer to one’s country as “the Fatherland” or “the Motherland” and with socialists and communitarians (on the left and the right) essentially modeling their ideal society after the family.

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  1. All page numbers, provided for your convenience, refer to the 1998 2nd Edition. ↩

  2. Arendt uses the term ‘action’ more narrowly than do the praxeologists of the Austrian School. ↩

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Aphoristic Observation: (Statist) politics is the continuation of war by other means.

Democracy, Pop Culture, Vulgar Politics, War
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A while back, I was watching the movie Crimson Tide and made the following observation.

There was mention of the famous dictum by the Prussian general, military historian, and theorist Carl von Clausewitz: “War is the continuation of politics by other means.”

There is a profound truth in that dictum. It identifies shared characteristics of statist politics and war: anti-social conflict, some imposing their will on others, destruction and redistribution of wealth, and so on. When statist political means fail to have the desired result and recourse is made to naked war, the true character of both the aggressors and the statist political process is revealed.

But I think that von Clausewitz got it backwards; the observation would have been more profound and true had he written instead: “(Statist) politics is the continuation of war by other means.”

Ballots replace bullets within the democratic state but conflict persists with special interest groups vying for the reins of power so that they can use the perceived legitimacy of the state to impose their will on each other. Beneath the sophisms that grant the state legitimacy there lies the same threat or use of initiatory violence that is present in war. Open war is traded for the illusion of peace.

Might this quip from Ronald Reagan touch upon a similar insight? “Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.” Is he referring to war? Or prostitution? Both analogies would be apt. War is often a boon to both prostitutes and politicians, though prostitutes at least are usually more honest about what they do and can conduct their business peacefully.

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