“Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor, not the profession of arms, brings happiness. Peace builds, war destroys.” – The World at War
The oft-used adage that War is the Health of the State originated from a 1917 essay, “The State” by anti-war progressive writer, Randolph Bourne. Noting how war is used to manipulate the patriotism and cooperation of the citizenry, the state’s influence and wealth grow once a herd mentality accepts collectivist policies. Bourne believed the state existed only under the spell of war. Without war, the state had no inherent power and returned to a government formed for civic living.
In Ralph Raico’s 2024 book, “The World at War”, Raico provides a classical liberal response to the causes of perpetual war in the twentieth century, focusing on World War I and World War II. The book is, in fact, Raico’s 3-hour 1983 lecture at a Cato Institute seminar reprinted with annotations. As founder of the short-run libertarian publication, the New Individualist Review, Raico was a historian of liberty and professor emeritus at Buffalo College University. A student of Ludwig von Mises, Fredrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard, Raico focuses on the relationship between war and the disastrous rise of the state.
While classical liberalism and the Industrial Revolution created a working class that was becoming richer by the decade, its decline in the late nineteenth century was replaced with growing interest in central planning and welfare states worldwide. Governments, by appeasing the needs of the people, became distributors of benefits, in exchange for their continuous wars. Then as state control took effect in the West, chronic wars led to tyranny over the people at home. Imperialism spread through expansionism across Europe, as standing armies grew into a century of conflict.
Often referred to as the “Great War”, World War I would lead to a rise in both communism and fascist movements worldwide. In the deadliest war at the time, nearly 40 million soldiers and civilians lost their lives, while millions more were wounded. The war resulted in the collapse of four empires. The rise of fascism and Nazism in Germany would initiate WWII.
America entered the war through its Anglophile elites, falling for propaganda and lies that kept the wars going. A War Industries board took control of the American economy through price controls and allocation of supplies, resulting in a growing state domestically as political structures were expanded to finance the war.
Under the guise of a national emergency, warfare was increasingly used to advance the state. More federal spending, surveillance, and bureaucracies resulted. While lost lives typically measured the costs of wars, the result of wars was growing empires worldwide, public debts totaling into the trillions, and acceptance of government dependence. The newest iteration of war is proxy wars. By providing weapons and provisions to another country willing to do the dirty work for us, why put our soldiers at risk? As such, war-hungry, interventionist politicians keep the Military Industrial Complex in business, whether our troops are involved or not.
The interventionist policy that created the World Wars in the twentieth century was the opposite of the noninterventionist policies of the founders and incompatible with empire building that ensued. Instead, the founders limited government, in favor of individual rights and happiness. Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural speech in 1801 called for “peace, commerce, and honest friendships with all nations, entangling alliances with none”.
War continues to be the health of the State today, with the US Pentagon, the largest single employer in the world, with 6 million employees. The alternative to a state bent on warfare is a return to a federated government, with a potent separation of powers between the states and its central government.
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