Migrations, Mixed Populations, and Modern Imperialism

In 1914, the predominant political mentality in Germany was authoritarian: most Germans believed that sheer physical might was the necessary and sufficient condition for successful politics. Because nothing was impossible to a powerful government, the essence of politics was to make the state irresistible. Mises believed this view to be shortsighted. But why did the Germans, of all nations, succumb to imperialism? Why did they not share with so much of the West the classical-liberal enthusiasm for individual liberty, private property, and national self-determination? Mises gave two answers, one relating to Germany's interior conditions, the other concerning its foreign relations. In both cases, he showed that German imperialism resulted from a clash between the principle of national self-determination and the principle of democratic government.

After a brief honeymoon with liberal ideas prior to 1848, the Germans embraced the tenets of statism because of certain particular conditions prevailing in the eastern provinces of Germany and Austria-Hungary. In these areas, the Germans were a small minority among other nations. The introduction of democratic government would have transferred political power from the hands of the German central states to local majorities of Poles, Ukrainians, Romanians, Hungarians, and Slovaks. This in turn would have prevented any political participation of the hitherto-dominating Germans, because, in a democratic system, the command of the language of the majority is an absolute necessity.⁴ As long as the liberal parties were in the opposition, the conflict between German self-determination and majority rule did not become apparent. In the wake of the revolution of 1848, however, popular democracy in the eastern territories threatened the new liberal establishment, and German liberals had been anti-democratic ever since.⁵

The second great problem of the Germans was their relative overpopulation. Classical liberalism had abolished more and more impediments, not only to trade, but also to the free movement of persons. As a result, people migrated to places offering better work conditions, which made their labor more productive. Many Germans had moved to colonies that were predominantly populated by English settlers. Surrounded by an English majority, the German émigrés quickly assimilated and thus were lost to the German nation. In a desperate attempt to counter this development, the German government established a system of protective tariffs, to reduce the incentives of German workers to emigrate under the pressure of more-productive foreign competition. When the failure of this policy became apparent, the government changed its strategy and decided instead to conquer British colonies. It began to build a mighty fleet to combat the Royal Navy, guardian of the British overseas empire. This in turn prompted the British entry into World War I.

Mises identifies population mixes with a German minority as the prime cause of German hostility to government by popular majority. The Germans preferred to rule as a minority over a majority of other nationalities, rather than be ruled by them. Mises was not moralizing. His purpose was to explain what had happened; he would leave it to others to address what should have happened.⁶ The German case was unprecedented: for the first time in the history of liberalism, the principle of national self-determination was incompatible with majority rule.

But imperialism was only partly a product of specific German conditions. It was also nourished through migrations that produced “unfavorable” population mixes elsewhere, and in this respect the German case had a universal significance. In fact, in all countries where great migrations had significantly modified the national balance, imperialism had made an unexpected and powerful return. Mises argued that the Czechs, Russians, Poles, and Hungarians had already followed in the footsteps of the Germans. The United States and Australia, too, treaded on imperialist paths with their immigration policies; mixed-population-induced imperialism had become a world problem.⁷

This modern imperialism was more powerful and destructive than its predecessors, because it could rely on the economic achievements of the brief but very productive era of liberty:

Modern tyrants have things much easier than their predecessors. He who rules the means of exchange of ideas and of goods in the economy based on the division of labor has his rule more firmly grounded than ever an imperator before. The rotary press is easy to put into fetters, and whoever controls it need not fear the competition of the merely spoken or written word. Things were much more difficult for the Inquisition.⁸

The limits of tyranny in the industrial age were by no means narrow. If it contented itself with mind control and thought control—the crucial elements of political domination—tyranny could last a long time indeed. But the destruction of private property would doom the central authority, because it would destroy the economic foundations of its power. Liberty would eventually be restored, but at least for a while it would be liberty in misery:

Only one external limit is posed to this rage for destruction.... The apparatus of the economy based on division of labor cannot be reproduced, let alone extended, if freedom and property have disappeared. It will die out, and the economy will sink back into primitive forms. Only then will mankind be able to breathe more freely.⁹

A truly ironic and sad aspect of the war was that the German imperialist spirit had won over those who had set out to defeat it.

Imperialism pressed weapons into the hands of all who do not want to be subjugated. To fight imperialism, the peaceful must employ all its means. If they then triumph in the struggle, they may indeed have crushed their opponent, yet themselves have been conquered by his methods and his way of thinking. They then do not lay down their weapons again, they themselves remain imperialists.¹⁰

The League of Nations, brainchild of Woodrow Wilson, was designed in a spirit of preserving the postwar power positions of the Anglo-Saxon and French nations, just as a hundred years earlier the Holy Alliance had been designed to conserve the new balance of power after the defeat of Napoleon. In the League, the imperialist “ideas of 1914 are in triumph over those of 1789.” While this ironic outcome of the struggle between liberalism and imperialism was tragic for the Germans, it is “less decisive from the standpoint of world history.”

The chief point remains that nations are being “punished” and that the forfeiture theory comes to life again. If one admits exceptions to the right of self-determination of nations to the disadvantage of “evil” nations, one has overturned the first principle of the free community of nations.¹¹

Moreover, the League pursued a blind one-size-fits-all agenda of making the world safe for democracy, overlooking the inconvenient fact that democratic government in areas with mixed populations does not mean national liberation but national oppression:

The League of Nations of Versailles adopts this [nationality] principle... only for the nations of Europe. Yet in doing so it overlooks the fact that applying this principle wherever the members of different peoples live mingled together only ignites conflict among peoples all the more. It is still more serious that the League of Nations does not recognize the freedom of movement of the person, that the United States and Australia are still allowed to block themselves off from unwanted immigrants. Such a League of Nations endures so long as it has the power to hold down its adversaries; its authority and the effectiveness of its principles are built on force, to which the disadvantaged must yield but which they will never recognize as right. Never can Germans, Italians, Czechs, Japanese, Chinese, and others regard it as just that the immeasurable landed wealth of North America, Australia, and East India should remain the exclusive property of the Anglo-Saxon nation and that the French be allowed to hedge in millions of square kilometers of the best land like a private park.¹²

Injustice had been perpetrated on the German nation, but Mises prophetically warned that it would be “the most terrible misfortune for Germany and for all humanity if the idea of revenge should dominate the German policy of the future.” He recommended that the Germans turn their backs on imperialism once and for all, and seek instead national self-determination and peaceful relations with all other nations. This was not an ethical imperative, but a policy in the best interest of the Germans:

To retaliate for wrong suffered, to take revenge and to punish, does satisfy lower instincts, but in politics the avenger harms himself no less than the enemy. The world community of labor is based on the reciprocal advantage of all participants. Whoever wants to maintain and extend it must renounce all resentment in advance. What would he gain from quenching his thirst for revenge at the cost of his own welfare?¹³