I find this book intriguing. First, I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never read it, or even heard of it until recently. Second, I don’t know who the author is, though she studied with Roepke and otherwise offers a massive bibliography, and is clearly an outstanding scholar. If anyone knows, please post.
Third, I’m intrigued by her thesis, namely that the two aspirations of modern liberals–socialism at home and a stable and prosperous peace internationally–are incompatible. She works through the implications that socialism has on the power structure of any individual country: socialism requires planning, planning requires centralization, and centralization means the total concentration of power. Then she contrasts this with the basis of international economic cooperation, which is rooted in trade and exchange and individual decision making. She then explains how the use of power in national economic planning means that the socialist country cannot make a contribution to stable and peaceful international organization.
The book helps make sense of the strange demands of modern liberals for concentrated national economic power but perfect peace in world affairs. They are forever shocked to see the central government they cheer in economic life used for warfare purposes abroad. The same confusion exists in the left-liberal attitude toward trade. They want undeveloped countries to be part of the world order but then denounce consumers in rich countries for buying products from poor countries and scream that it is a disaster when capital from the developed world travels to poor countries for the purposes of economic investment.
The absurdity is never so apparent than when consumers are decried for buying goods produced by people abroad who earn low wages. What precisely would the left have us to do? Never buy a product from a poor person abroad? And if we are not to trade with less developed nations, what is their alternative scheme for economic development of poor countries? Socialism, aid dependency, or what?
Domestically, they demand that everyone be integrated into the domestic economic system. Internationally, they cry fowl whenever a country is integrated into the global economic system.
The Tamedly study helps makes sense of these contradictions: the left has never reconciled their sympathy for socialism at home with the genuine desire for the flourishing of an integrated world community.
I hope that this book gets more attention now that it is online.
{ 8 comments }
Jeff, “I’m intrigued by her thesis, namely that the two aspirations of modern liberals–socialism at home and peace internationally–are incompatible.”
Interesting–compare to Hoppe’s view that nations that have relatively liberal internal economic policies (the relatively rich West) would tend to be militarily more powerful, and thus more aggressive and imperialistic, than developing states.
SK, that’s an interesting point but unrelated to anything in this book. Her point does not concern the likelihood concerning whether socialist or capitalist societies are more or less imperialistic. She is speaking about the incompatibility between domestic and international goal of socialist management. She argues that there is only one kind of orderliness that can emerge from international relations, that which is rooted in cooperative trading and production relations. Socialism makes this impossible. She explained, in other words, how it is that socialist states drop off the map and out of the progressive history of civilization.
I don’t know how right Hoppe is about that. I’ve just finished Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”, which references multiple studies to support the controversial statement in his first article that “Islam has bloody borders”. I quote:
“1. Muslims were participants in twenty-six of fifty ethnopolitical conflicts in 1993-1994 analyzed in depth by Ted Robert Gurr (Table 10.1). Twenty of these conflicts were between groups from different civilizations, of which fifteen were between Muslims and non-Muslims. There were, in short three times as many intercivilizational conflicts involving Muslims as there were conflicts between all non-Muslim civilizations. The conflicts within Islam also were more numerous than those in any other civilization, including tribal conflicts in Africa. In contrast to Islam, the West was involved in only two intracivilizational and two intercivilizational conflicts. Conflicts involving Muslims also tended to be heavy in casualties. Of the six wars in which Gurr estimates that 200,000 or more people were killed, three (Sudan, Bosnia, East Timor) were between Muslims and non-Muslims, and only one (Angola) involved only non-Muslims.
2. The New York Times identified forty-eight locations in which some fifty-nine ethnic conflicts were occurring in 1993. In half these places Muslims were clashing with other Muslims or with non-Muslims. Thirty-one of the fifty-nine conflicts were between groups from different civilizations, and, paralleling Gurr’s data, two-thirds (twenty-one) of these intercivilizational conflicts were between Muslims and others (Table 10.2).
3. In yet another analysis, Ruth Leger Sivard indentified twenty-nine wars (defined as conflicts involving 1000 or more deaths in a year) under way in 1992. Nine of twelve intercivilizational conflicts were between Muslims and non-Muslims, and Muslims were once again fighting more wars than people from any other civilization.
Table 10.1
Ethnopolitical Conflicts, 1993-1994
Intracivilization Intercivilization Total
Islam 11 15 26
Others 19* 5 24
Total 30 20 50
*Of which 10 were tribal conflicts in Africa
Table 10.2
Ethnic Conflicts, 1993
Intracivilization Intercivilization Total
Islam 7 21 28
Others 21* 10 31
Total 28 31 59
*Of which 10 were tribal conflicts in Africa
Three different compilations of data thus yield the same conclusion: In the early 1990s Muslims were engaged in more intergroup violence than were non-Muslims and two-thirds to three-quarters of intercivilizational wars were between Muslims and non-Muslims. Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards.
The Muslim propensity toward violent conflict is also suggested by the degree to which Muslim societies are militarized. In the 198s Muslim countries had military force ratios (that is, the number of Military personnel per 1000 population) and military effort indices (force ratio adjusted for a country’s wealth) significantly higher than those for other countries. The average force ratios and military effort ratios of Muslim countries were roughyl twice those of Christian countries (Table 10.3). “Quite clearly,” James Payne concludes, “there is a connection between Islam and militarism.”
Table 10.3
Militarism Of Muslim and Christian Countries
Average Force Ratio Avg. Mil. Effort
Muslim countries (n = 25) 11.8 17.7
Other countries (n = 112) 7.1 12.3
Christian countries (n = 57) 5.8 8.2
Other countries (n = 80) 9.5 16.9
Muslim states also have had a high propensity to resort to violence in international crises, employing it to resolve 76 crises out of a total of 142 in which they were involved between 1928 and 1979. In 25 cases violence was the primary means of dealing with the crisis; in 51 crises Muslim states used violence in addition to other means. When they did use violence, Muslim states used high-intensity violence, resorting to full-scale war in 41 percent of the cases where violence was used and engaging in major clashes in another 38 percent of cases. While Muslim states resorted to violence in 53.5 percent in theri crises, violence was used by the United Kingdom in only 11.5 percent, by the United States in 17.9 percent, and by the Soviet Union in 28.5 percent of the crises in which they were involved. Among the major powers only China’s violence propensity exceeded that of the Muslim states: it employed violence in 76.9 percent of its crises. Muslim bellicosity and violence are late-twentieth century facts which neither Muslims nor non-Muslims can deny.”
I think the most relevant part is at the end. The United Kingdom and the United States have some of the free-est economies according to the Fraser Institute. Communist China and the Soviet Union were some of the most unfree, but they were far more likely to engage in violence. Muslims states are also notoriously unfree, if to a lesser degree than communist states. I think Hoppe does have a point in that what Huntington would refer to as Latin American, African and Buddhist civilizations are simply incapable of engaging in the violence the West did before the Cold War, but even though the Soviet Union was very unfree it was more capable of engaging in war than any of those OR Muslim states (and I would bet China as well), but it had a lower propensity for violence than Islam and China and a greater one than the free countries of the West.
Jeffery,
Have you considered partnering with an on-demand publisher so that you could offer hardbound or softbound copies of excellent books such as this? 300 pages is more than I can e-read. Cheers!
Jim
Jeffrey,
I am terribly embarrassed to say that I had not read this work before. My only defense is that, after having read this, I might have assumed that she was connected with the anti-communist right than the libertarian right based on the title, and I may not have purchased a copy from Caxton. Odd thing is that I don’t recall the title in the old Caxton catalogs, and I thought I purchased about all of their books in the 60-70′s–they were about the only source of Old Right books outside of FEE.
It’s quite clear that it is based on solid Austrian analysis and I should have read it long ago. She lists her location as South Pasadena and I’m very surprised that I hadn’t run across her. I was quite active back then and knew almost every libertarian in that area.
I must admit that I appreciate her discussions in the book about Proudhon. She sees him as nearly a free market anarchist akin to Rothbard (no references to Rothbard). Realy good analysis of the internal and external policies of socialist economies.
Look around the LeFevre boxes at the Mises Institute and you may have something on her. Bob never brought her up, but he was in the L.A. area at one time and active around anti-communist circles.
Best to you.
Just Ken
kgregglvWcox.net
http://classicalliberalism.blogspot.com
Ok, so a bit more data about the author here. She taught at the Pepperdine University School of Management, as Elisabeth Tamedly Lenches.
Here are two articles: 1 and 2.
There is also an article applying economics to service to God but I think I’ll make a special blog out of that one.
Excellent site blog.mises.org and I am really pleased to see you have this this post.
I am crrently working in the south of france looking at property for sale, having fun in the sun and bookmarking everything that I find interesting on the net (including blog.mises.org of course !)
It has taken me literally 1 hours and 17 minutes of searching the web to find you (just kidding!) so I shall be pleased to become a regular visitor from now on
Thanks
Comments on this entry are closed.