Salerno's Praxeological Analysis of War Making

[Borodog]

Wow. Dynamite stuff.

Praxeology, the science of purposeful human action, has been mainly elaborated in the area of economics by the Austrians. As recommended by Rothbard, by treating war making as the purposeful human action that it is, Joseph Salerno has taken the first steps towards praxeological analysis of war.

[ QUOTE ]
War is the outcome of class conflict inherent in the political relationship — the relationship between ruler and ruled, parasite and producer, tax-consumer and taxpayer. The parasitic class makes war with purpose and deliberation in order to conceal and ratchet up their exploitation of the much larger productive class. It may also resort to war making to suppress growing dissension among members of the productive class (libertarians, anarchists, etc.) who have become aware of the fundamentally exploitative nature of the political relationship and become a greater threat to propagate this insight to the masses as the means of communication become cheaper and more accessible, e.g., desktop publishing, AM radio, cable television, the Internet, etc. Furthermore, the conflict between ruler and ruled is a permanent condition. This truth is reflected — perhaps half consciously — in the old saying that equates death and taxes as the two unavoidable features of the human condition.
<font color="white"> . </font>
Thus, a permanent state of war or preparedness for war is optimal from the point of view of the ruling elite, especially one that controls a large and powerful state. Take the current US government as an example. It rules over a relatively populous, wealthy, and progressive economy from which it can extract ever larger boodles of loot without destroying the productive class. Nevertheless, it is subject to the real and abiding fear that sooner or later productive Americans will come to recognize the continually increasing burden of taxation, inflation, and regulation for what it really is — naked exploitation. So the US government, the most powerful mega-state in history, is driven by the very logic of the political relationship to pursue a policy of permanent war.
<font color="white"> . </font>
From "The War to Make the World Safe for Democracy" to "The War to End All Wars" to "The Cold War" and on to the current "War on Terror," the wars fought by US rulers in the twentieth century have progressed from episodic wars restricted to well-defined theaters and enemies to a war without spatial or temporal bounds against an incorporeal enemy named "Terror." A more appropriate name for this neoconservative-contrived war would involve a simple change in the preposition to a "War of Terror" — because the American state is terrified of productive, work-a-day Americans, who may someday awaken and put an end to its massive predations on their lives and property and maybe to the American ruling class itself.

[/ QUOTE ]

A fantastic read, and there are a couple of abridged mp3s available as well, if that's more your style.

[Nielsio]

Mmm, this insight doesn't bode very well for the organization that is the state.

[clowntable]

Good read, thanks [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[GoodCallYouWin]

This guy (Joe Salerno) has a great series availible on youtube.

[andyfox]

"The parasitic class . . . may also resort to war making to suppress growing dissension among members of the productive class (libertarians, anarchists, etc.) who have become aware of the fundamentally exploitative nature of the political relationship and become a greater threat to propagate this insight to the masses as the means of communication become cheaper and more accessible . . . The current US government . . . is subject to the real and abiding fear that sooner or later productive Americans will come to recognize the continually increasing burden of taxation, inflation, and regulation for what it really is — naked exploitation."

Sheer fantasy. Where does one see a growing class of libertarians and anarchists who are a "threat" to spread their insights to the ignorant? If anything, the new means of communication have made more Americans politically aware and thus more apt--not less so--to be politically active within the framework of the current system. People identify as liberals, conservatives, Democrats, or Republicans. To think that our political elite is afraid of anarchists or libertarians is silly.

Any movement to reduce "the increasing burden of taxation" will take place within the major political parties; it will not be an effort to do away with government.

[Exsubmariner]

This reminds me of a discussion (many) in which I have postulated that it is, in fact, practical(economical)to make war, depending on who you are, of course. It would seem that one of the tenents of AC, being that it is not profitable or practical to make war, is in error. Funny that someone at Mises is the one to discover this....

[ianlippert]

[ QUOTE ]
This reminds me of a discussion (many) in which I have postulated that it is, in fact, practical(economical)to make war, depending on who you are, of course. It would seem that one of the tenents of AC, being that it is not profitable or practical to make war, is in error. Funny that someone at Mises is the one to discover this....

[/ QUOTE ]

Trade barriers are also economical depending on who you are. I'm not really sure what you are trying to say by this.

[tolbiny]

[ QUOTE ]
This reminds me of a discussion (many) in which I have postulated that it is, in fact, practical(economical)to make war, depending on who you are, of course. It would seem that one of the tenents of AC, being that it is not profitable or practical to make war, is in error. Funny that someone at Mises is the one to discover this....

[/ QUOTE ]

It is not practical to wage war if you are the one who has to pay for the war, Austrians long ago realized that war profiteers do exist.

[Borodog]

[ QUOTE ]
"The parasitic class . . . may also resort to war making to suppress growing dissension among members of the productive class (libertarians, anarchists, etc.) who have become aware of the fundamentally exploitative nature of the political relationship and become a greater threat to propagate this insight to the masses as the means of communication become cheaper and more accessible . . . The current US government . . . is subject to the real and abiding fear that sooner or later productive Americans will come to recognize the continually increasing burden of taxation, inflation, and regulation for what it really is — naked exploitation."

Sheer fantasy. Where does one see a growing class of libertarians and anarchists who are a "threat" to spread their insights to the ignorant? If anything, the new means of communication have made more Americans politically aware and thus more apt--not less so--to be politically active within the framework of the current system. People identify as liberals, conservatives, Democrats, or Republicans. To think that our political elite is afraid of anarchists or libertarians is silly.

Any movement to reduce "the increasing burden of taxation" will take place within the major political parties; it will not be an effort to do away with government.

[/ QUOTE ]

"etc."

Besdies, last time I checked, both major parties were losing affiliation while "unaffiliated" and "independent" were growing like wildfire.

However, I agree that government isn't particularly afraid of a tiny group of people who largely don't even vote; I think Salerno's rhetoric overreaches his case in that passage.

But if your worst criticism is that you feel Salerno overestimates government's fear of libertarians, then I'm glad you agreed with that actual point of the article, even if you have a quibble with an almost irrelevent detail.

[Borodog]

[ QUOTE ]
This reminds me of a discussion (many) in which I have postulated that it is, in fact, practical(economical)to make war, depending on who you are, of course. It would seem that one of the tenents of AC, being that it is not profitable or practical to make war, is in error. Funny that someone at Mises is the one to discover this....

[/ QUOTE ]

Funny that you still can't ever get anything straight. It is emphatically NOT profitable to make war . . . if you have to pay for it yourself. If you can externalize the costs by law, then it can become personally profitable to do litterally anything, fight wars, send people to the moon, build pyramids, no matter how collasally wasteful.