In his 1651 book Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes argued that, in order to protect its subjects, the state—“Leviathan”—need to be all-powerful. The problem, others noted and history showed, is that a non-democratic Leviathan is a recipe for tyranny. But a democratic state will respect every citizen’s interests because we love ourselves. The democratic Leviathan loves you because he is you. This theory took many forms up to the present day.
James Sensenbrenner, a former congressman who was instrumental in the adoption of the “Patriot” Act of 2001, is part of the legions who implicitly support this theory. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, he complains that this Hobbesian law now threatens parents who object to the teachings of public schools (“The Patriot Act Wasn’t Meant to Target Parents,” October 12, 2021):
When debating the Patriot Act and other federal antiterrorism laws, nobody in either chamber of Congress could have imagined these laws would be turned against concerned parents at local school board meetings.
Probably so, but it is more a reflection of their political naïveté than a proof of anything else. The Patriot Act surprised its well-meaning supporters in numerous other ways, not to speak of the many banana republics in the world that imitated it.
Starting in the 18th century, it was discovered, both theoretically and in reality, that virtuous intentions of politicians, bureaucrats, and even voters are not what mainly fuels the democratic state. Classical liberals realized that, as individuals have different preferences and interests, it is impossible for even well-meaning politicians and bureaucrats to satisfy all with ad hoc interventions. This discovery was buttressed in the 20th century by the development of the public choice school of economics and related theories.
The same century provided many illustrations. The Leviathan that started Word War II and ran the Holocaust was, half a century before, viewed as the paragon of civilization. (For more on this point, see my “Progressivism’s Tainted Label,” review of Thomas C. Leonard, Illiberal Reformers, Regulation 39:2 [Summer 2016], pp. 51-55; and my “Where Are We on the Road to Serfdom?” review of Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, Regulation 44:3 [Fall 2021], pp. 56-59.) Another example: who could imagine that the Communist state, which was meant to end the “exploitation of man by man,” would kill its own citizens by the tens of millions?
To summarize the whole story in a few words: Give Leviathan an inch and he will take a mile.
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Oct 14 2021 at 1:30pm
What you discuss here is a major reason why I am highly skeptical of government intervention in the economy, even if there are sound theoretical reasons to intervene. It is why I resist government intervention even if there are clear externality issues.
Policy-making requires a theory of government. All too often, that theory of government gets hand-waved away.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 14 2021 at 2:28pm
Jon: Here is a little problem. In Buchanan, one apparently finds two theories of government: one is politics as exchange; the other one is exploitation by Leviathan. How can the paradox be resolved?
Jon Murphy
Oct 14 2021 at 2:56pm
That…that’s a good question.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 14 2021 at 3:46pm
Jon: I think the answer is that the “politics as exchange” theory applies when the rules of the game (the constitutional rules) are unanimously consented to; and the Leviathan theory applies in all other cases, including of course in a democracy. Comments? Objections?
Jens
Oct 14 2021 at 5:24pm
The need for unanimous consent against a backdrop of total individual relativism sounds a bit like a recipe for eternal frustration. Or immunization.
Jon Murphy
Oct 14 2021 at 8:42pm
At first blush, that seems like a plausible explanation. I need to think on it some more. But it does seem to fit with his story in Limits of Liberty of how conflicting understandings of the rules can cause more overt enforcement of those rules, leading to Leviathan
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 15 2021 at 2:26pm
Jens: I don’t know what you mean by relativism but I very strongly suspect that you don’t understand what Buchanan is saying. His The Limits of Liberty is essential reading. My “Lessons and Challenges in The Limits of Liberty” presents some of his essential ideas and gives a link to the online version of the book. (When I first read it in the early 80s, I was quite troubled. But there is no shame in being intellectually troubled.)
Jose Pablo
Oct 16 2021 at 2:22pm
I think that what the Founding Fathers tried, back in 1789 was incredible close to Buchanan’s idea of a Constitutional Contract + Post constitutional exchange (which I think shows a remarkable political intuition, since the FF predate Buchanan)
This idea follows Scalia’s (very defensible) views on the intention of the FF of “tying the hands of Leviathan” by making very difficult to introduce new legislation. Not unanimity, but certainly difficult enough to get something close to the same “gridlock” that “unanimity” would provide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_gd–UO0
Amendment 9 and 10 + Section 8, can be seen as another attempt to clearly limit the Post Constitutional Exchange to a minimum.
Looking from now is clear that both attempts were a total failure. An exercise of naivete by the Founding Fathers: we do have the “excess of legislation” (big time!!) they were trying to prevent, and successive governments (following Roosevelt lead) have made a mockery of Amendments 9 and 10 + Section 8.
After all, Leviathan is not that easy to chain.
Kevin Dick
Oct 14 2021 at 2:35pm
There is much truth to the old joke that one of the more frightening phrases is, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
Monte
Oct 14 2021 at 7:59pm
Not sure we can definitively attribute this to quote to Hayek: “The success of a country is inversely proportional to it’s number of economists.”
Jose Pablo
Oct 15 2021 at 8:02pm
I am not that sure about the “sound theoretical reasons” and the “clear externality issues” parts.
Very likely Huemer’s ‘In Praise of Passivity” gives a very precise idea or where our “soundness” (as far as interventions are concerned) stands: exactly where the “soundness” of George Washington doctors’ theoretical reasons stood in 1799.
Following Taleb advice, economist should pay more attention to the Hippocratic Oath part of “Primum, non nocere”
David Seltzer
Oct 15 2021 at 2:54pm
Interesting comments on a thorny subject. In Hayek’s, The Road to Serfdom, he quotes Mussolini. We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become. This opens chapter 4 entitled; The “Inevitability” of Planning. Hayek tells us: that few planners are content to say central planning is desirable. Circumstances, like technology, are beyond our control and therefore compel elected officials to substitute planning for competition. The planners believe they can save those poor dispossessed souls displaced by competition. That mentality, I believe, brings us to another mile marker on the road to perdition…er…serfdom.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 21 2021 at 4:47pm
David: This Mussolini quote is indeed remarkable.
Christoph Kohring
Oct 23 2021 at 9:33am
For Richard A. Epstein, it is the exact reverse from Mussolini. He wants “Simple Rules for a Complex World” (1997). What is nice about Benito Mussolini most of the time is the clarity of his words.
Maniel
Oct 16 2021 at 12:03am
Bonsoir Pierre,
When I think about Federal Government decisions which relate in any way to our economy, I believe that at best they are relatively harmless (unfortunately, I can’t think of any examples) or they are quite costly (all the rest). I believe that this belief system was explained very well in 1848 by Frédéric Bastiat in his pamphlet, l’État. “L’État, c’est la grande fiction à travers laquelle tout le monde s’efforce de vivre aux dépens de tout le monde.” To me he is saying that the government is the means (the great myth) by which all of us are taken care at the expense of all of us. He goes on to say much more in that classic work about each of us wanting to take full advantage of the work of others. Let’s just call this, “the will of the people.”
When we switch sides to look at the politicians, they just want my vote – no more and no less. If I were a member of one of the two dominant political parties, they could have my vote by promising me just what I think I want (Bastiat wrote about that too in 1850 in “Ce qu’on voit et ce qu’on ne voit pas,” the seen and the unseen). Fortunately, for my peace of mind if not for the weight of my vote, I am a registered Libertarian.
Here’s my point: there are a very large number of voters in those two misguided political parties who think they know what they want and have persuaded themselves that the politician they vote for will bring it back to them from Washington DC. I believe that, because doing so much for so many costs money, la grande fiction de Bastiat has become our Leviathan.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 16 2021 at 12:09pm
Maniel: Two addendums or corrigenda. First, politicians don’t want YOUR vote, which is worthless except in the very unlikely case of equality of all other votes. They want 50% + 1 or the minimal plurality necessary to win, whomever these votes are from. Second, because one individual’s vote has a near-zero probability of being decisive, voters don’t vote their interests, except if they have persuaded themselves that their interests are what is just. This is why rich progressives on the two coasts vote for policies that will tax them: they vote their opinions, not their interests.
Jose Pablo
Oct 16 2021 at 1:10pm
“they could have my vote by promising me just what I think I want” and not even so.
They could have your vote by just making you feeling better about yourself. By signaling that they/you support, for example, “ending poverty” (this is a politician’s favorite one), “fighting climate change” (this is a relatively new one which is going to have / is already having terrible implications), “not leaving anybody behind” (a classical one too), or, on the other side (the “feel good idea” works both sides of the aisle) protecting the country from outsiders (although this was a favorite one on the left not so long ago. Even using eugenics as an accepted tool).
The fact that this has been tried for centuries and have never worked seems irrelevant to voters. Which prove that voters are not really expecting politicians to “solve” this problem (they barely care, or even understand, the implementation details). They are just expecting politicians providing voters with the “feeling good” experience of “supporting” the idea of trying to solve it.
Caplan made a wonderful job explaining this in The Myth of the Rational Voter.
Maniel
Oct 16 2021 at 6:27pm
@Pierre, @Jose,
Thank you for your responses to my earlier post; well stated. However, I was trying to make the point that we the inhabitants (whether voter, taxpayer, visitor, etc.) of our over-promised land enable the Leviathan. Politicians are just the replaceable hacks who do what they think will get them elected. Just looking at the government spending component – including military operations, which cost money and may also cost a great deal more – I would like to see a “truth in spending” requirement for all outlays, both the estimates and the actual expenditures. I would also like to see this information connected to politicians votes so that I (and yes, many others) would know how much the bandit “representing” me was costing.
Thanks again.
Maniel
Pajser
Oct 17 2021 at 5:04am
“Give Leviathan an inch and he will take a mile …”
It appears you believe that there is some entity … the giver … that can control the Leviathan by choosing how much he will give. But why do you think that Leviathan – and not the giver – started WW2? How that giver suddenly lost his responsibility?
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 17 2021 at 11:39pm
Pajser: Good question. My implied “you” was mainly rhetorical. You could also take it to mean the voters or the people who give tacit consent. Often, “you” is the excited mob.
rsm
Oct 19 2021 at 1:49am
《Classical liberals realized that, as individuals have different preferences and interests, it is impossible for even well-meaning politicians and bureaucrats to satisfy all with ad hoc interventions.》
Isn’t the promise of technology that we can provide all things to all people?
If government gives us each a generous, inflation-proofed, money-printed basic income, who pays?
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 20 2021 at 12:28am
rsm: What do you mean?
rsm
Oct 21 2021 at 12:25am
Why can’t government satisfy the preference of people not to be taxed, and the preference for a basic income, by printing money faster than prices rise, so real purchasing power remains stable?
Jon Murphy
Oct 21 2021 at 7:09am
Why can’t you stop a balloon from popping by pumping in air faster than the balloon expands?
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 21 2021 at 11:05am
rsm: Like in Venezuela or in Zimbabwe?
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 21 2021 at 11:12am
rsm: The answer to your question is that people are not stupid and will soon expect what is going to happen: hyperinflation. They will want to spend their wheelbarrows of money before it is even more even worthless, fuelling more hyperinflation–until the economy collapses. If the government is slightly less ambitious, you have what you can see on the charts of my post on MMT.
Christoph Kohring
Oct 23 2021 at 9:41am
Just a historical quibble, the Leviathan which ran the Holocaust (i.e. Germany) is not the same as the ones which started World War II (i.e. Great Britain & France). The world war started on 3 september 1939. What began on 1st september 1939 was a stricly regional, European war. 😎
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