After I spoke at the University of Colorado at Boulder last week, someone asked whether political centralization was inevitable, given the advantages in warfare that a centralized state enjoys, and thus the relative danger of remaining a small or decentralized state. A philosophy professor followed up with a note via my contact page pointing out one professor’s conclusion that warfare was actually more brutal, on a per capita basis, in earlier times than warfare in the age of centralized states.
I said I would ask Donald Livingston, professor emeritus of philosophy at Emory University, about this. What follows is his reply. As usual, he doesn’t disappoint.
There is nothing “inevitable” about centralization. Man is a social being. There is an inbuilt disposition of human nature to form small scale polities composed of federations of extended families, kinship ties, and accepted foreigners. This is natural. Vast scale centralized regimes are not natural. They are artificial. Modern theorists such as Hobbes, Locke try to say that these large states are rationally formed because the aggregate of individuals under them choose this condition for peace and security (Hobbes) or to enhance liberty (Locke). Both Hobbes and Locke are wrong. The truth is that all large states are the result of conquest and a rough process of digesting the smaller polities consumed. A story about “peace” or “liberty,” or the later ones about “equality,” “human rights,” “democracy,”etc. are noble lies told after the fact to reconcile us to the modern state.
A look at ancient history might suggest that centralized empires are inevitable. Everywhere in the ancient world we find empires: the Hittite, Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Egyptian,etc. Everywhere except Greece. The Greeks built a world class civilization from which we still draw inspiration which was completely decentralized. It was composed of over 1,500 tiny republics, the largest of which was around 160,000 or so.
What of defense? The Persian empire commanded the resources of some 40 million. The Greeks had around 8 million, scattered from Naples to the Black Sea. Surely the big boy could pick these little states off like fruit. But the Persians were never able to do so. History is filled with David and Goliath stories of this sort. Eg. Switzerland founded, as I recall, in 1291 and surrounded by large intrusive monarchies.
It is true that all things equal a larger polity can conquer a smaller one, but politics is not a predictive science because all things are never equal. Eventually though Greek civilization was centralized by Philip and Alexander. But it lasted several centuries before that and lived off the glory of its decentralist achievements as a conquered region on into the Roman empire. Another brilliant decentralized civilization was that of Christendom which was composed of thousands of independent and quasi-independent political units. And what had never happened before: the separation of priestly and imperial power.
And are large modern states safe? European states were centralized under monarchs and even more so under mass democracies; each seeking to grow larger to be able to overwhelm the other. In the process of centralization, peace could be enforced within the state–though at the price of “digesting” the hundreds of smaller units crushed into it to create its huge bulk. This left a rootless mass of timid and obedient subjects under central control.
Nevertheless, there was peace of sorts within the state’s border. But what about outside? The first global war was the Seven years War, then Napoleon, then WWI, WWII, the Cold War. Have Germany, France, Britain, Russia been safe places to live in the 20th century? No, they have not been. And you know Rummel’s figures that nearly four times as many people have been killed by their own governments as in all the wars fought around the globe, foreign and domestic, in the 20th century.
If those figures are right, they throw into question the claim that modern wars have not been as destructive as pre-modern ones. Besides if one means by modern war, the sort of war that emerged in international law after the Thirty Years War, then it must be said that that style of war ended with Lincoln. B.H. Liddell-Hart in The Revolution in Warfare says that a return to savage war begins in America with total war against the South. (Though he thinks that in turn springs from a habit of savage frontier wars with the Indians.)
I am not competent to judge whether modern total war is not as destructive as pre-modern wars. I have my doubts, but I will assume it is not as destructive in per capita terms. Still our moral judgment should be about whether decentralization of a modern state is a good thing or not. Not whether modern states are superior in some respects to pre-modern ones. They obviously are in some respects and not in others.
So what is to be said for decentralization of modern states? Since we know how destructive modern states are and have been; and since we know that large centralized states are not necessary for achieving a civilization meeting high standards of human excellence (the Greeks and Christendom are empirical examples); and since we know that small modern states are quite successful (most of the top ten states with the highest per capita income are always small states: Norway, Netherlands, Switzerland, etc.) there is good reason to pursue prudently a project of decentralization and even secession down to something as small as the states of the ancient Greek model if circumstances permitted. Hayek once said he thought liberty in the future might best be preserved in small states.
Defense would have to be considered, but defense is a highly contingent thing depending on the character of a people, resources, and above all terrain, terrain, terrain. And there is no reason to think that federations of small states could not defend themselves. The U.S. has escaped the devastation of war (except for the conquest of the South to create a unitary modern state) only because of its unique location between two oceans set at great distances from possible enemies. And if a real threat did occur to small states alliances could be formed. But there is no final solution here. Despite the best efforts federations of small states might be overwhelmed. But that is true of large states as well.
Finally, one should not expect too much of politics. It is a contingent adventure where every policy is characterized more by its unintended consequences than by confirmation of the hopeful predictions made in justifying it. And man is a sinful, fallen being who will corrupt any instrument of coercion once in his hands. And that goes for decentralized as well as centralized states. Hobbes presented the modern state as a kind of salvation; as the final solution to the problem of human misery, in so far as man could do anything about his condition. But there is no final solution in politics. That is why Christ refused the offer to rule the world politically.
Nevertheless, we have learned something from experience which we have an obligation to follow in policy. We have learned, e.g., that a regime of individual liberty, private property, a relatively free market, the rule of law tends to produce wealth. Wealth of course is not the highest good, but it is not to be despised, and if we want it for our people we would be well advised to follow the principles that have produced it to the extent our culture can accommodate them.
Likewise, the track record of vast scale centralized states over the past three centuries lies open to view. And it is disgraceful. (There has been prosperity, but has been accomplished in spite of states of large scale not because of them.) Would it not be prudent to seek a correction, being guided by the standards of older, successful decentralized ways of ordering the political?
The problems generated by the modern political tradition cannot be corrected by staying within that tradition. (That is what your critic does.) One must evaluate it from the outside; from a perspective within another tradition. If there is no such other perspective, we will buzz around like the fly in the fly bottle, repeating the same old bromides. Fortunately, we have two coherent decentralist traditions alien to modernity: the ancient Greeks and Christendom. That does not mean we seek to recall them, that would be nostalgic. But we can learn from them: they can enable us to see weaknesses, falsehoods, and deceptions in the modern state that would otherwise be closed to view. And seeing these things, we might be able to put forth decentralist reforms to better our condition. But this too would be an adventure about which one must have humility.
