The Nature of Government; F. Dekkers

the magic words "Open Sesame!" give access to fabulous wealth. Many former Commu nist countries seem to assign the same magical power to the word "democracy." Democracy, of course, is a fair-sized step in the right direction, but some very important considerations must be taken into account. No democratic majority can create wealth just by making laws because none of the things that form wealth are found freely in nature. Nature offers only potentials: raw materials that have to be mined, transported, transformed, packed, dis tributed, and so on. Wealth is created by individu als-by their ambition, motivation, labor, thrift, investments, organizational talents, and, most of all, by their thinking and ideas. As Ludwig von Mises wrote: "Production is not something physi cal, material, and external; it is a spiritual and intel lectual phenomenon. Its essential requisites are not human labor and external forces and things, but the decision of the mind to use these factors as means for the attainment of ends. What produces the product are not toil and trouble in themselves, but the fact that the toiling is guided by reason."

(Human Action [Chicago: Henry Regnery Com pany, third edition, 1966],pp.141-42) Politicians can't create wealth, but they can destroy it because that is the nature of political power. As Mises wrote: "State or government is the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion. It has the monopoly of violent action. No individMr. Dekkers, who lives in Belgium, is the founder of the European Libertarian Center. This article is excerpted from his foreword to the forthcoming Hungarian languageedition ofPlanned Chaos by Ludwig von Mises. ual is free to use violence or the threat of violence if the government has not accorded this right to him. The state is essentially an institution for the preservation of peaceful interhuman relations. However, for the preservation of peace it must be prepared to crush the onslaughts of peace-break ers." (Human Action, p. 149) Government reserves for itself the legal faculty to use physical force. All laws are backed by that legal monopoly, the threat to impose fines and/or imprisonment on those who don't comply or obey.

Power can be misused or abused. I may have a gun to defend myself and my property against thieves, but if I use it to steal someone else's prop erty, I am misusing the gun and abusing the power it confers on me. In the same way politicians can misuse or abuse the power of the state. The more the power of the state is concentrated in fewer hands, the greater the danger of abuse. A one-man dictatorship willbe more dangerous than a triumvirate, which will be more dangerous than rule by a party leadership. The majority rule of democracy is a further improvement, and it has the advantage that it can be changed or revoked by elections. Nevertheless no majority, be it demo cratically elected or not, offers in itself the guaran tee that it won't abuse the power at its disposal. It is clear that the use of governmental power must somehow be limited. One way to restrict gov ernment power is by a "super-law" -a law that can't be changed by a political majority vote, a law to which government itself must comply. In most countries such a "super-law" is called the constitu tion. The function of the constitution is, or should be, to protect the individual against the abuse of government power by politicians.

But can we determine objectively the function of government? Can we state precisely the limits to which government should go in exercising its power? This comes down to the question: "Can we delimit properly and objectively the legitimate, the just, the appropriate use of governmental vio lence?" Mises addressed this question in a speech before The Foundation for Economic Education in 1969: "The main problem of the market, the main problem of human cooperation, is the fact that there are people who resort to violent action, who do not comply with the rules that are neces sary for the preservation and operation of the mar ket. In order to prevent this violent action, in order to make possible the workings of the market, of human cooperation, of human society, it is neces sary to have an institution that protects the market against violence, against people who lack the knowledge or the will to comply with the rules of peaceful exchange of commodities and services.

This is the function of government." Violence is the opposite of voluntary coopera437 tion. Violence means coercion, oppression, injus tice, and ultimately war. The only way, however, to oppose violence is with violence. Violence thus has two aspects. It can be used aggressively:an aggres sor initiates violence and uses it against otherwise peaceful fellowmen. Or violence can be used de fensively: it is then used only in reaction against aggressors. The conclusion is that government, the embod iment of all legal violence, can act in a positive way for the inhabitants of a country only if it uses its power to protect them against foreign invaders and domestic predators. Government can create the most appropriate conditions for voluntary and creative coopera tion between individuals by protecting them against violence. In that way, government can be the individual's best ally. But when government abuses its entrusted power, it can become the most dangerous of enemies. The legally disarmed individual is powerless against the exclusive legal wielder of physical force. History is filled with examples of both. D IDEAS ON LIBERTY The Necessity of Private Property I f history could prove and teach us anything, it would be that private ownership of the means of production is a necessary requisite of civi lization and material wellbeing. All civilizations have up to now been based on private property. Only nations committed to the principle of privateproperty have risen above penury and produced science, art and literature. There is no experience to show that any other social system could provide mankind with any of the achievements of civilization. Nevertheless, only a few people consider this as a sufficient and incontestable refutation of the socialist program.

-LUDWIG VON MISES, Planned Chaos 438 A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK The Politics of Plunder by John Chamberlain D OUg Bandow, who has collected his columns and articles in The Politicsof Plunder:Misgovernmentin Washington (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, N.J., 507 pages, $34.95cloth) is about as total an anti-Statist as one could find. He positively resents politicians, or anyone else for that matter, who use other peo ple's money for their own ends. This makes him an enemy of thousands who live inside the Washing ton Beltway. He does not spare his language: politicians to him are simply thieves. They practice legalized larceny. The trouble, from a reviewer's standpoint, is that a book about the thieves becomes many books. The thieves abound and multiply. Where, indeed, to cut in on the parade? Bandow offers his own cut-in point when he says 30 percent of the American farmers are part of America's "permanent dependent class." Their subsidies increased in the 1980s at a faster rate than any other government programs. Direct pay ments to farmers ran $25.8 billion in 1986, a 545 percent jump over 1981.