The Rise and Fall of the City

Mises Daily: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Nearly every urban setting in the world is fraught with conflicts between groups, so much so that political commentators can speak of votes and candidates mostly in terms of the demographic composition and impact of the vote. It is not only in Baghad were people struggle over the levers of Power. Rather, every election turns on the "religious vote," the black vote," the business vote, the women's vote, etc.. This is a sad commentary on the modern city, founded in the middle ages as a place of peace and commerce and which became the very foundation of civilization.
Why do these conflicts exist and why does the city — the cultural center of commecial civilization characterized by peace and prosperity — attract them? The Marxists say that that urban conflict is rooted in the war between capital and labor, the racialists says its root is in the exploition of one race by another, and feminists view it as a working out of a perpetual struggle over sex. Religion evidentally plays a role as well, as the case of Iraq demonstrates.
And yet none of these factors speaks to the root cause of urban conflict. For the answer, I offer this reflection from my book Democracy: The God that Failed (now in paperback). It is the state and no other institution or social force that turns peaceful urban civilization into a war-zone:
Ludwig von Mises explained the evolution of society — of human cooperation under the division of labor — as the combined result of two factors. These are first, the fact of differences among, men (labor) and the inequalities of the geographical distribution of the nature-given factors of production (land); and second, the recognition of the fact that work performed under the division of labor is more productive than work performed in self-sufficient isolation. He writes:

If and as far as labor under the division of labor is more productive than isolated labor, and if and as far as man is able to realize this fact, human action itself tends toward cooperation and association; man becomes a social being not in sacrificing his own concerns for the sake of a mythical Moloch, society, but in aiming at an improvement in his own welfare. Experience teaches that this condition — higher productivity achieved under division of labor — is present because its cause — the inborn inequality of men and the inequality in the geographical distribution of the natural factors of production — is real. Thus we are in a position to comprehend the course of social evolution. [1]

Several points are worth emphasizing here in order to reach a proper understanding of this fundamental insight of Mises's into the nature of society — points which will also help us realize some preliminary conclusions regarding the role of sex and race in social evolution.
First, it is important to recognize that inequalities with respect to labor or land are a necessary but by no means a sufficient condition for the emergence of human cooperation. If all humans were identical and everyone were equipped with identical natural resources, everyone would produce the same qualities and quantities of goods, and the idea of exchange and cooperation would never enter anyone's mind.
However, the existence of inequalities is not enough to bring about cooperation. There are also differences in the animal kingdom — most notably the difference of sex (gender) among members of the same animal species as well as the difference between the various species and subspecies (races); yet there is no such thing as cooperation among animals.
Now in paperback! $24 To be sure, there are bees and ants who are referred to as "animal societies." But they form societies only in a metaphorical sense.
[2] The cooperation between bees and ants is assured purely by biological factors — by innate instincts. They cannot not cooperate as they do, and without some fundamental changes in their biological makeup, the division of labor among them is not in danger of breaking down. In distinct contrast, the cooperation between humans is the outcome of purposeful individual actions, of the conscious aiming at the attainment of individual ends. As a result, the division of labor among men is constantly threatened by the possibility of disintegration. Within the animal kingdom, then, the difference between the sexes can only be said to be a factor of attraction — of reproduction and proliferation; whereas the differences of the species and subspecies can be referred to as a factor of repulsion — of separation or even of fatal antagonism, of evasion, struggle, and annihilation.
Moreover, within the animal kingdom it makes no sense to describe the behavior resulting from sexual attraction as either consensual (love) or nonconsensual (rape); nor does it make any sense to speak of the relationship between the members of different species or subspecies as one of hostility and hatred or of criminal and victim. In the animal kingdom there only exists interaction, which is neither cooperative (social) behavior nor criminal (antisocial) behavior. As Mises writes:

There is interaction — reciprocal influence — between all parts of the universe: between the wolf and the sheep that he devours; between the germ and the man it kills; between the falling stone and the thing upon which it falls. Society on the other hand, always involves men acting in cooperation with other men in order to let all participants attain their own ends. [3]

In addition to an inequality of land and labor, a second requirement must be fulfilled if human cooperation is to evolve. Men — at least two of them — must be capable of recognizing the higher productivity of a division of labor based on the mutual recognition of private property (of the exclusive control of every man over his own body and over his physical appropriations and possessions) as compared to either self-sufficient isolation or aggression, depredation, and domination.
That is, there must be a minimum of intelligence or rationality; and men — at least two of them — must have the sufficient moral strength to act on this insight and be willing to forego immediate gratification for even greater future satisfaction. But for intelligence and conscious will, writes Mises, men would have forever remained deadly foes of one another, irreconcilable rivals in their endeavors to secure a portion of the scarce supply of means of sustenance provided by nature. Each man would have been forced to view all other men as his enemies; his craving for the satisfaction of his own appetites would have brought him into an implacable conflict with all his neighbors. No sympathy could possibly develop under such a state of affairs. [4]
There are members of the human species who are capable of understanding the insight but who lack the moral strength to act accordingly. Such persons are either harmless brutes living outside of and separated from human society, or they are criminals. They are persons who knowingly act wrongly and who besides having to be tamed or even physically defeated must also be punished in proportion to the severity of their crime to make them understand the nature of their wrongdoings and hopefully to teach them a lesson for the future. Human cooperation (society) can only prevail and advance as long as man is capable of subduing, taming, appropriating, and cultivating his physical and animalistic surroundings, and as long as he succeeds in suppressing crime, reducing it to a rarity by means of self-defense, property protection, and punishment. [5]
As soon as these requirements are fulfilled, however, and as long as man, motivated by the knowledge of the higher physical productivity of a division of labor based on private property, is engaged in mutually beneficial exchanges, the "natural" forces of attraction arising from the differences in the sexes and the "natural" forces of repulsion or enmity arising from the differences between and even within the races, can be transformed into genuinely "social" relations. Sexual attraction can be transformed from copulation to consensual relations, mutual bonds, households, families, love, and affection. [6] (It testifies to the enormous productivity of the family-household that no other institution has proven more durable or capable of producing such emotions) And inter- and intraracial repulsion can be transformed from feelings of enmity or hostility to a preference for cooperating (trading) with one another.
Human cooperation — division of labor — based on integrated family-households and on separated households, villages, tribes, nations, races, etc., wherein man's natural biological attractions and repulsions for and against one another are transformed into a mutually recognized system of spatial (geographical) allocation (of physical approximation and integration or of separation and segregation, and of direct or of indirect contact, exchange and trade), leads to improved standards of living, a growing population, further extensification and intensification of the division of labor, and increasing diversity and differentiation. [6]
As a result of this development and an ever more rapid increase of goods and desires which can be acquired and satisfied only indirectly, professional traders, merchants, and trading centers will emerge. Merchants and cities function as the mediators of the indirect exchanges between territorially separated households and communal associations and thus become the sociological and geographical locus and focus of intertribal or interracial association.
It will be within the class of merchants in which racially, ethnically, or tribally mixed marriages are relatively most common; and since most people, of both reference groups, typically disapprove of such alliances, it will be the wealthier members of the merchant class who can afford such extravagances. However, even the members of the wealthiest merchant families will be highly circumspect in such endeavors. In order not to endanger their own position as a merchant, great care must be taken that every mixed marriage is to be a marriage between "equals." [7]
Accordingly, it will be in the big cities as the centers of international trade and commerce, where mixed couples and their offspring typically reside, where members of different ethnicities, tribes, races, even if they do not intermarry, still come into regular direct personal contact with each other (in fact, that they do so is required by the fact that their respective tribesmen back home do not have to deal directly with more or less distasteful strangers), and where the most elaborate and highly developed system of physical and functional integration and segregation will arise. [8] It will also be in the big cities where, as the subjective reflection of this complex system of spatio-functional allocation, citizens will develop the most highly refined forms of personal and professional conduct, etiquette, and style. It is the city that breeds civilization and civilized life.
To maintain law and order within a big city, with its intricate pattern of physical and functional integration and separation, a great variety of jurisdictions, judges, arbitrators and enforcement agencies in addition to self-defense and private protection will come into existence. There will be what one might call governance in the city, but there will be no government (state). [9]
For a government to arise it is necessary that one of these judges or arbitrators succeed in establishing himself as a monopolist. That is, he must be able to insist that no citizen can choose anyone but him as the judge or arbitrator of last resort, and he must successfully suppress any other judge or arbitrator from trying to assume the same role (thereby competing against him).
More interesting than the question of what a government is, however, are the following: How is it possible that one judge can acquire a judiciary monopoly, given that other judges will naturally oppose any such attempt; and what specifically makes it possible, and what does it imply, to establish a monopoly of law and order in a big city, i.e., over a territory with ethnically, tribally, or racially mixed populations?
First, almost by definition it follows that with the establishment of a city government interracial, tribal, ethnic, and clannish-familial tensions will increase because the monopolist, whoever he is, must be of one ethnic background rather than another; hence, his being the monopolist will be considered by the citizens of other ethnic backgrounds as an insulting setback, i.e., as an act of arbitrary discrimination against the people of another race, tribe, or clan. The delicate balance of peaceful interracial, interethnic, and interfamilial cooperation, achieved through an intricate system of spatial and functional integration and separation, will be upset.
Second, this insight leads directly to the answer as to how a single judge can possibly outmaneuver all others. In brief, to overcome the resistance by competing judges, an aspiring monopolist must shore up added support in public opinion. In an ethnically mixed milieu this typically means playing the "race card." The prospective monopolist must raise the racial, tribal, or clannish consciousness among citizens of his own race, tribe, clan, etc., and promise, in return for their support, to be more than an impartial judge in matters relating to one's own race, tribe, or clan (that is, exactly what citizens of other ethnic backgrounds are afraid of, i.e., of being treated with less than impartiality). [10]
At this stage in this sociological reconstruction let us, without further explanation, briefly introduce a few additional steps required to arrive at a realistic contemporary scenario regarding race, sex, society, and state. Naturally, a monopolist will try to maintain his position and possibly even turn it into a hereditary title (i.e., become a king). However, accomplishing this within an ethnically or tribally mixed city is a far more difficult task than within a homogeneous rural community. Instead, in big cities governments are far more likely to take on the form of a democratic republic — with "open entry" into the position of supreme ruler, competing political parties, and popular elections. [11] In the course of the political centralization process [12] — the territorial expansion of one government at the expense of another — this big city model of government will become essentially its only form: that of a democratic state exercising a judicial monopoly over a territory with racially or ethnically diverse populations.
While the judicial monopoly of governments nowadays typically extends far beyond a single city and in some cases over almost an entire continent, the consequences for the relations between the races and sexes and spatial approximation and segregation of government (monopoly) can still be best observed in the great cities and their decline from centers of civilization to centers of degeneration and decay.
With a central government extending over cities and the countryside, countries, inlanders, and foreigners are created. This has no immediate effect on the countryside, where there are no foreigners (members of different ethnicities, races, etc.). But in the great trading centers, where there are mixed populations, the legal distinction between inlander and foreigner (rather than ethnically or racially distinct private property owners) will almost invariably lead to some form of forced exclusion and a reduced level of interethnic cooperation.
Moreover, with a central state in place, the physical segregation and separation of city and countryside will be systematically reduced. In order to exercise its judicial monopoly, the central government must be able to access every inlander's private property, and to do so it must take control of all existing roads and even expand the existing system of roadways. Different households and villages are thus brought into closer contact than they might have preferred, and the physical distance and separation of city and countryside will be significantly diminished. Thus, internally, forced integration will be promoted.
Naturally, this tendency toward forced integration due to the monopolization of roads and streets will be most pronounced in the cities. This tendency will be further stimulated if, as is typical, the government takes its seat in a city. A popularly elected government cannot help using its judicial monopoly to engage in redistributive policies in favor of its ethnic or racial constituency, which will invariably attract even more of its own tribe's members, and with changes in the government more members of even more and different tribes will be drawn from the countryside to the capital city to receive either government jobs or handouts. As a result, not only will the capital become relatively "oversized" (as other cities shrink). At the same time, due to the monopolization of "public" streets — whereon everyone may proceed wherever he wants — all forms of ethnic, tribal, or racial tensions and animosities will be stimulated.
Moreover, while interracial, tribal, and ethnic marriages were formerly rare and restricted to the upper strata of the merchant class, with the arrival of bureaucrats from various racial, tribal, and ethnic backgrounds in the capital city, the frequency of interethnic marriage will increase, and the focus of interethnic sex — even without marriage — will increasingly shift from the upper class of merchants to the lower classes — even to the lowest class of welfare recipients. Government welfare support will naturally lead to an increase in the birthrate of welfare recipients relative to the birthrate of other members, in particular of members of the upper class of their tribe or race.
As a result of this overproportional growth of low and even underclass people and an increasing number of ethnically, tribally, racially mixed offspring especially in the lower and lowest social strata, the character of democratic (popular) government will gradually change as well. Rather than the "race card" being essentially the only instrument of politics, politics becomes increasingly "class politics." The government rulers can and will no longer rely exclusively on their ethnic, tribal, or racial appeal and support, but increasingly they must try to find support across tribal or racial lines by appealing to the universal (not tribe or race specific) feeling of envy and egalitarianism, i.e., to social class (the untouchables or the slaves versus the masters, the workers versus the capitalists, the poor versus the rich, etc.). [13],[14]
The increasing admixture of egalitarian class politics to the preexisting tribal policies leads to even more — racial and social — tension and hostility and to an even greater proliferation of the low and under-class population. In addition to certain ethnic or tribal groups being driven out of the cities as a result of tribal policies, increasingly also members of the upper classes of all ethnic or tribal groups will leave the city for the suburbs (only to be followed — by means of public (government) transportation — by those very people whose behaviors they had tried to escape). [15] With the upper class and the merchants leaving in larger numbers, however, one of the last remaining civilizing forces will be weakened, and what is left behind in the cities will represent an increasingly negative selection of the population: of government bureaucrats who work but no longer live there, and of the lowlifes and the social outcasts of all tribes and races who live there yet who increasingly do not work but survive on welfare. (Just think of Washington, DC.)
When one would think that matters could not possibly become worse, they do. After the race and the class cards have been played and done their devastating work, the government turns to the sex and gender card, and "racial justice" and "social justice" are complemented by "gender justice." [16] The establishment of a government — a judicial monopoly — not only implies that formerly separated jurisdictions (as within ethnically or racially segregated districts, for instance) are forcibly integrated; it implies at the same time that formerly fully integrated jurisdictions (as within households and families) will be forcibly broken down or even dissolved.
Rather than regarding intra-family or -household matters (including subjects such as abortion, for instance) as no one else's business to be judged and arbitrated within the family by the head of the household or family members, [17] once a judicial monopoly has been established, its agents — the government — also become and will naturally strive to expand their role as judge and arbitrator of last resort in all family matters. To gain popular support for its role the government (besides playing one tribe, race, or social class against another) will likewise promote divisiveness within the family: between the sexes — husbands and wives — and the generations — parents and children. [18] Once again, this will be particularly noticeable in the big cities.
Every form of government welfare — the compulsory wealth or income transfer from "haves" to "have nots" lowers the value of a person's membership in an extended family-household system as a social system of mutual cooperation and help and assistance. Marriage loses value. For parents the value and importance of a "good" upbringing (education) of their own children is reduced. Correspondingly, for children less value will be attached and less respect paid to their own parents. Owing to the high concentration of welfare recipients, in the big cities family disintegration is already well advanced. In appealing to gender and generation (age) as a source of political support and promoting and enacting sex (gender) and family legislation, invariably the authority of heads of families and households and the "natural" intergenerational hierarchy within families is weakened and the value of a multi-generational family as the basic unit of human society diminished.
Indeed, as should be clear, as soon as the government's law and legislation supersedes family law and legislation (including interfamily arrangements in conjunction with marriages, joint-family offspring, inheritance, etc.), the value and importance of the institution of a family can only be systematically eroded. For what is a family if it cannot even find and provide for its own internal law and order! At the same time, as should be clear as well but has not been sufficiently noted, from the point of view of the government's rulers, their ability to interfere in internal family matters must be regarded as the ultimate prize and the pinnacle of their own power.
To exploit tribal or racial resentments or class envy to one's personal advantage is one thing. It is quite another accomplishment to use the quarrels arising within families to break up the entire — generally harmonious — system of autonomous families: to uproot individuals from their families to isolate and atomize them, thereby increasing the state's power over them. Accordingly, as the government's family policy is implemented, divorce, singledom, single parenting, and illegitimacy, incidents of parent-, spouse-, and child-neglect or -abuse, and the variety and frequency of "nontraditional" lifestyles increase as well. [19]


Parallel to this development will be a gradual but steady surge in crime and criminal behavior. Under monopolistic auspices, law will invariably be transformed into legislation. As a result of an unending process of income and wealth redistribution in the name of racial, social, and gender justice, the very idea of justice as universal and immutable principles of conduct and cooperation will be eroded and ultimately destroyed. Rather than being conceived of as something preexisting (and to be discovered), law is increasingly considered as government made law (legislation).
Accordingly, not only will legal uncertainty increase, but in reaction the social rate of time preference will rise (i.e., people in general will become more present-oriented and have an increasingly shorter planning horizon). Moral relativism will also be promoted. For if there is no such thing as an ultimate right, then there is also no such thing as an absolute wrong. Indeed, what is right today may be wrong tomorrow, and vice versa.
Rising time preferences combined with moral relativism, then, provides the perfect breeding ground for criminals and crimes — a tendency especially evident in the big cities. It is here that the dissolution of families is most advanced, that the greatest concentration of welfare recipients exists, that the process of genetic pauperization has progressed furthest, and that tribal and racial tensions as the outcome of forced integration are most virulent. Rather than centers of civilization, cities have become centers of social disintegration, corruption, brutishness, and crime. [20]
To be sure, history is ultimately determined by ideas, and ideas can, at least in principle, change almost instantly. But in order for ideas to change it is not sufficient for people to see that something is wrong. At least a significant number must also be intelligent enough to recognize what it is that is wrong. That is, they must understand the basic principles upon which society — human cooperation — rests: the very principles explained here. And they must have sufficient will power to act according to this insight.
The state — a judicial monopoly — must be recognized as the source of de-civilization: states do not create law and order; they destroy it. Families and households must be recognized as the source of civilization. It is essential that the heads of families and households reassert their ultimate authority as judge in all internal family affairs. Households must be declared extraterritorial territory, like foreign embassies. Free association and spatial exclusion must be recognized as not bad but good things that facilitate peaceful cooperation between different ethnic and racial groups. Welfare must be recognized as a matter exclusively of families and voluntary charity and state welfare as nothing but the subsidization of irresponsibility.

The Rise and Fall of the City - Hans-Hermann Hoppe - Mises Institute