DemocracyThe God That Failed (14 page)

With the end of World War I, mankind truly left the monarchical age.
⁸
In the course of one and a half centuries since the French Revolution, Europe, and in its wake the entire world, have undergone a fundamental transformation. Everywhere, monarchical rule and sovereign kings were replaced by democratic-republican rule and sovereign "peoples."

The first assault of republicanism and the idea of popular sovereignty on the dominating monarchical principle was repelled with the military defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of Bourbon rule in France; and as a result of the revolutionary terror and the Napoleonic wars, republicanism was widely discredited for much of the nineteenth century. However, the democratic-republican spirit of the French Revolution left a permanent imprint. From the restoration of the monarchical order in 1815 until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, all across Europe popular political participation and representation was systematically expanded. The franchise was successively widened and the powers of popularly elected parliaments increased everywhere.
⁹

From 1815 to 1830, the right to vote in France was still severely restricted under the restored Bourbons. Out of a population of some 30 million, the electorate included only France's very largest property owners—about 100,000 people (less than one-half of one percent of the population above the age of twenty). As a result of the July Revolution of 1830, the abdication of Charles X and the coronation of the Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe, the number of voters increased to about 200,000. As a result of the revolutionary upheavals of 1848, France again turned republican, and universal and unrestricted suffrage for all male citizens above the age of twenty-one was introduced. Napoleon III was elected by nearly 5.5 million votes out of an electorate of more than 8 million.

⁸
See on thisGuglielmo Ferrero,
Peaceand
War
(Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), esp. chap. 3; idem,
Macht
(Bern: A. Francke, 1944); Erik von KuehneltLeddihn,
Leftism
Revisited
(Washington D.C.: Henry Regnery, 1990); Reinhard Bendix,
Kings
or
People
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).

⁹
For a detailed documentation see Peter Flora,
State,
Economy,
and
Society
in
West
ern
Europe
1815-1975
(Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 1983), vol. 1, chap. 3; also Robert R. Palmer and Joel Colton,
A
History
of
the
Modern
World
(New York: Alfred Knopf, 1992), esp. chaps. 14 and 18.

In the United Kingdom, after 1815 the electorate consisted of some 500,000 well-to-do property owners (about 4 percent of the population above age 20). The Reform Bill of 1832 lowered the property owner requirements and extended the franchise to about 800,000. The next extension, from about 1 million to 2 million, came with the Second Reform Bill of 1867. In 1884 property restrictions were relaxed even further and the electorate increased to about 6 million (almost a third of the population above age 20 and more than three-fourths of all male adults).

In Prussia, as the most important of the thirty-nine independent German states recognized after the Vienna Congress, democratization set in with the revolution of 1848 and the constitution of 1850. The lower chamber of the Prussian parliament was hence elected by universal male suffrage. However, until 1918 the electorate remained stratified into three estates with different voting powers. For example, the wealthiest people—those who contributed a third of all taxes—elected a third of the members of the lower house. In 1867 the North German Confederation, including Prussia and twenty-one other German states, was founded. Its constitution provided for universal unrestricted suffrage for all males above the age of twenty-five. In 1871, after the victory over Napoleon III, the constitution of the North German Confederation was essentially adopted by the newly founded German Empire. Out of a total population of around 35 million, nearly 8 million people (or about a third of the population over twenty) elected the first German
Reichstag.

After Italy's political unification under the leadership of the Kingdom of Sardinia and Piedmont in 1861, the vote was only given to about 500,000 people out of a population of some 25 million (about 3.5 percent of the population above age twenty). In 1882, the property requirements were relaxed, and the minimum voting age was lowered from twentyfive to twenty-one years. As a result, the Italian electorate increased to more than 2 million. In 1913, almost universal and unrestricted suffrage for all males above thirty and minimally restricted suffrage for males above twenty-one was introduced, raising the number of Italian voters to more than 8 million (more than 40 percent of the population above twenty).

In Austria, restricted and unequal male suffrage was introduced in 1873. The electorate, composed of four classes or
curiae
of unequal voting powers, totaled 1.2 million voters out of a population of about 20 million (10 percent of the population above twenty). In 1867a fifth
curia
was added. Forty years later the
curia
system was abolished, and universal and equal suffrage for males above age twenty-four was adopted, bringing
the number of voters close to 6 million (almost 40 percent of the population above twenty).

Russia had elected provincial and district councils—
zemstvos
—since 1864; and in 1905, as a fallout of its lost war against Japan, it created a parliament—the
Duma
—which was elected by near universal, although indirect and unequal, male suffrage. As for Europe's minor powers, universal or almost universal and equal male suffrage has existed in Switzerland since 1848, and was adopted between 1890 and 1910 in Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Turkey.

Although increasingly emasculated, the monarchical principle dominated until the cataclysmic events of World War I. Before 1914, only two republics existed in Europe—France and Switzerland. And of all major European monarchies, only the United Kingdom could be classified as a parliamentary system; that is, one in which supreme power was vested in an elected parliament. Only four years later, after the United States—where the democratic principle implied in the idea of a republic had only recently been carried to victory as a result of the destruction of the secessionist Confederacy by the centralist Union government
¹⁰
—had entered the European war and decisively determined its outcome, monarchies had all but disappeared, and Europe turned to democratic republicanism.
¹¹

In Europe, the defeated Romanovs, Hohenzollerns, and Habsburgs had to abdicate or resign, and Russia, Germany, and Austria became democratic republics with universal—male and female—suffrage and parliamentary governments. Likewise, all of the newly created successor states—Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia (with the sole exception of Yugoslavia)—adopted democratic-republican constitutions. In Turkey and Greece, the monarchies were overthrown. Even where monarchies remained nominally in existence, as in Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and
the Scandinavian countries, monarchs no longer exercised any governing power. Universal adult suffrage was introduced, and all government power was invested in parliaments and "public" officials.
¹²
A new world order—the democratic-republican age under the aegis of a dominating U.S. government—had begun.

¹⁰
On the aristocratic (undemocratic) character of the early U.S., see Lord Acton, "Political Causes of the American Revolution" in idem,
The
Liberal
Interpretation
of
History
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967); also, Chris Woltermann, "Federalism, Democracy and the People,"
Telos
26, no. 1 (1993).

¹¹
On the U.S. war involvement see John EC. Fuller,
The
Conduct
of
War
(New York: Da Capo, 1992), chap. 9; on the role of Woodrow Wilson, and his policy of wanting to "make the world safe for democracy," see Murray N. Rothbard, "World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals,"
Journal
of
Libertarian
Studies
9, no. 1 (1989); Paul Gottfried,"Wilsonianism: The Legacy that Won't Die,"
Journal
of
Libertarian
Studies
9, no. 2 (1990); Kuehnelt-Leddihn,
Leftism
Revisited,
chap. 15.

Evidence
And
Illustrations-.

Exploitation
And
Present-orientedness
Under
Monarchy
And
Democratic
Republicanism

From the viewpoint of economic theory, the end of World War I can be identified as the point in time at which private government ownership was completely replaced by public government ownership, and whence a systematic tendency toward increased exploitation—government growth—and rising degrees of social time preference—presentorientedness—can be expected to take off. Indeed, such has been the grand, underlying theme of post-World War I Western history: With some forebodings in the last third of the nineteenth century in conjunction with an increased emasculation of the
ancien
regimes,
from 1918 onward practically all indicators of governmental exploitation and of rising time preferences have exhibited a systematic upward tendency.

Indicators
of
Exploitation

There is no doubt that the amount of
taxes
imposed on civil society increased during the monarchical age.
¹³
However, throughout the entire period, the
share
of government revenue remained remarkably stable and low. Economic historian Carlo M. Cipolla concludes,

All in all, one must admit that the portion of income drawn by the public sector most certainly increased from the eleventh century onward all over Europe, but it is difficult to imagine that, apart from particular times and places, the public power ever managed to draw more than 5 to 8 percent of national income.

And he then goes on to note that this portion was not systematically exceeded until the second half of the nineteenth century.
¹⁴
In feudal times, observes Bertrand de Jouvenel,

¹²
Interestingly, the Swiss Republic, which had been the first country to establish universal male suffrage (in 1848), was the last to expand suffrage also to women (in 1971). Similarly, the French Republic, where universal male suffrage had existed since 1848, extended the franchise to women only in 1945.

¹³
See Hans Joachim Schoeps,
Preussen.
Geschichte
eines
Staates
(Frankfurt/M.: Ullstein, 1981), p. 405 on data for England, Prussia, and Austria.

¹⁴
Carlo M. Cipolla,
Before
the
Industrial
Revolution:
European
Society
and
Economy,
1
000-1
700
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1980), p. 48.

state expenditures, as we now call them, were thought of... as the king's own expenditures, which he incurred by virtue of his station. When he came into his station, he simultaneously came into an "estate" [in the modern sense of the word]; i.e., he found himself endowed with property rights ensuring an income adequate to "the king's needs." It is somewhat as if a government of our own times were expected to cover its ordinary expenditures from the proceeds of state-owned industries.
¹⁵

In the course of the political centralization during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, additional sources of government revenue had been opened up: customs, excise duties, and land taxes. However, up until the mid-nineteenth century of all Western European countries only the United Kingdom, for instance, had an income tax (from 1843 on). France first introduced some form of income tax in 1873, Italy in 1877, Norway in 1892, the Netherlands in 1894, Austria in 1898, Sweden in 1903, the U.S. in 1913, Switzerland in 1916, Denmark and Finland in 1917, Ireland and Belgium in 1922, and Germany in 1924.
¹⁶
Yet even at the time of the outbreak of World War I, total government expenditure as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) typically had not risen above 10 percent and only rarely, as in the case of Germany, exceeded 15 percent. In striking contrast, with the onset of the democratic republican age, total government expenditures as a percentage of GDP typically increased to
20 to 30 percent in the course of the 1920s and 1930s, and by the mid1970s had generally reached 50 percent.
¹⁷

¹⁵
Bertrand de Jouvenel,
Sovereignty:
An
Inquiry
into
the
Political
Good
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 178. "The king," de Jouvenel goes on to explain,

could not exact contributions, he could only solicit "subsidies." It was stressed that his loyal subjects granted him help of their own free will, and they often seized this occasion to stipulate conditions. For instance, they granted subsidies to John the Good [of France], subject to the condition that he should henceforth refrain from minting money that was defective in weight In order to replenish his Treasury, the king might go on a begging tour from town to town, expounding his requirements and obtaining local grants, as was done on the eve of the Hundred Years' War; or he might assemble from all parts of the country those whose financial support he craved. It is a serious mistake to confuse such an assembly with a modern sitting parliament, though the latter phenomenon has arisen from the former. The Parliament is sovereign and may exact contributions. The older assemblies should rather be thought of as a gathering of modern company directors agreeing to turn over to the Exchequer a part of their profits, with some trade union leaders present agreeing to part with some of their unions' dues for public purposes. Each group was called on for a grant, and each was thus well placed to make conditions. A modern parliament could not be treated like that, but would impose its will by majority vote. (pp. 178-79)
¹⁶
See Flora,
State,
Economy,
and
Society
in
Western
Europe,
vol. 1, pp. 258-59.