 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Hans-Hermann Hoppe |
|---|---|
| Subject | Political Philosophy |
Publication date | 2001 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages | 304 |
| ISBN | 978-0765808684 |
Democracy: The God That Failed is a 2001 book byHans-Hermann Hoppe containing thirteen essays ondemocracy. Passages in the book opposeuniversal suffrage and favor "natural elites".[1] The book helped popularize Hoppe in far-right discourse.[1][2]
Hoppe is a German-born economist who was a professor atUniversity of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is associated with theMises Institute, aright-libertarian think tank.[1]
In the book, Hoppe argues that democracy is a cause of civilizational decline.[3] The book "examines modern democracies in the light of various evident failures" which, in Hoppe's view, include rising unemployment rates, expandingpublic debt, and insolventsocial security systems. He attributes democracy's failures to pressure groups seeking increased government expenditures, regulations and taxation and a lack of counter-measures to them. Potential solutions he discusses includesecession, "shifting of control over the nationalised wealth from a larger, central government to a smaller, regional one" and "complete freedom of contract, occupation, trade and migration introduced".[4]
Hoppe characterizes democracy as "publicly-ownedgovernment", and when he compares it withmonarchy—"privately-owned government"—he concludes that the latter is preferable; however, Hoppe aims to show that both monarchy and democracy are deficient systems compared to his preferred structure for advancing civilization—something he calls thenatural order, a system free of both taxation andcoercive monopoly in whichjurisdictions freely compete for adherents. In his Introduction, he lists other names used elsewhere to refer to this concept of "natural order", including "ordered anarchy", "private property anarchism", "anarcho-capitalism", "autogovernment", "private law society", and "pure capitalism".[5]
The title of the work is an allusion toThe God that Failed, a 1949 work in which six authors who formerly heldcommunist views describe their experience of, and subsequent disillusion with, communism.
The book helped popularize Hoppe in thefar-right discourse, particularly a section of the book that called for expulsion of political rivals.[1][2]
Asked byThe Intercept in 2021 about his incorporation into far-rightinternet memes celebratingpolitical violence, Hoppe responded that the question was ignorant, saying, "I have been an intellectual champion of private property right, free markets, freedom of contract and association, and peace", and, "What do I know? There are lots of crazy people out there!"[2]
Walter Block, a colleague of Hoppe's at theMises Institute, reviewed the book inThe American Journal of Economics and Sociology and gave it a generally favorable review, writing, "This book will take by storm the field of political economy, and no one interested in these topics can afford to be without it."[6]
In a 2017 perspective article inThe Washington Post about libertarian connections with thealt-right, John Ganz wrote that Hoppe's book "cites specious scholarship on the IQ differences inherent in race to support his arguments, presents an 'anarcho-capitalist' defense of segregation as the prerogative of property owners, and is so unabashedly anti-egalitarian he doubts the basic humanity of people who don’t fit into his ideological schema."[7]
Ava Kofman credits the book with pushingCurtis Yarvin away from standard libertarian thought and towards more monarchical ideas, contributing to the development of theDark Enlightenment movement. Authoritarianism scholar Julian Waller noted "it's not copy-and-pasted [fromDemocracy], but it is such a direct influence that it's kind of obscene".[8]
