We were all Bismarckians then.

In my "camouflaged as superliberalism" post, I link back to my Bismarckianism post of a year ago. Exactly a year ago today, as it turns out. I'm pleased to say that I think it holds up. I still agree with it. Either I was starting to figure things out back then or my mind is now calcifying into a complacent worldview.

Either way, here's a classic episode of lowercase liberty:

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

We are all Bismarckians now.

When Rothbardians talk of our opposition to the "Welfare-Warfare State" we are often taken to be implying that the enemy is a coalition of left- and right-wing statists, with Welfare on the Left and Warfare on the Right. This works in the recent American context, but from a larger historical perspective it doesn't work at all.

The first modern welfare state was a Machiavellian strategy on the part of Otto von Bismarck, the architect of the German Empire. There was nothing ideological about it. Bismarck knew that the impoverished masses were in favor of liberalism. The poor of the 19th century understood that free markets and free trade would improve their lives, and they recognized mercantilism, protectionism, and other forms of statist privilege as the enemies and oppressors of common people. By creating a new generation of dependents, Bismarck effectively denied the German liberals the support of the masses.

(Just as the state monopoly on education created a class of dependent academics and denied the liberals their old position in the intellectual mainstream.)

This was clearly socialism of the welfare-statist variety, but notice that it was not at all what we would currently call left-wing. It was not remotely egalitarian.

Left-wing socialism -- the kind most people think of when they hear the S-word -- is an egalitarian attack, not just on the economy, but on all the institutions of culture and civilization, both Old Regime and bourgeois. Right-wing socialism, in contrast, is the coercive attempt to give permanence to the current power establishment -- The Establishment -- a power base in constant fear of the changes that liberalism brings. Ironically, the bourgeoisie (the very "class" created by liberalism) and the poor and working masses (whose lot is improved by liberalism and ultimately made worse by the state) become the populist coalition behind right-wing socialism.

I go on to talk about fascism then and now.

Keep reading, if you like.