Like most Mises.org readers, I’ve enjoyed continuing enlightenment from the changing quotations by Mises on the homepage and blog. I was struck by this one that just popped up among the 1,400:
“Louis XIV was very frank and sincere when he said: I am the State. The modern etatist is modest. He says: I am the servant of the State; but, he implies, the State is God. You could revolt against a Bourbon king, and the French did it. This was, of course, a struggle of man against man. But you cannot revolt against the god State and against his humble handy man, the bureaucrat.” - Bureaucracy
This is a short form of Hoppe’s argument concerning the decline from monarchy to democracy, from the private state that you can overthrow and thus intimidate to the public state that is everywhere, entrenched, carries the illusion of self-government.
Of course Mises himself remained a democrat because he so closely identified with the old liberal cause and knew the agenda of the monarchists concerning state control. Even so, Hoppe’s contribution represents a full elaboration on the point Mises makes above.
