The Rise of the Plantation State

The rise of populist politicians is a worldwide phenomenon. An interesting article by the bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal in Germany analyzes the phenomenon in light of last weekend’s electoral advance of two populist parties, one at the extreme right, the other at the extreme left, in two German states (Bertrand Benoit, “Europe’s Populist Surge Isn’t Only About Immigration, It Is About Fading Trust,” Wall Street Journal, August 2, 2024).

The portrait Benoit and his sources draw is roughly the following. Some crisis happens, which the government is unable to solve because of the checks and balances of liberal democracy. This fuels popular discontent and mistrust of government. As a result, the voters turn to populist politicians.

This analysis raises many questions. Why are today’s democratic governments less able to find solutions than before? How can voters mistrust government while they elect populist rulers who promise more government? Populism is and has always been interventionist. And how can voters believe that populist governments will be able to solve all the problems, given for example (as Benoit mentions) the level of public debt—a problem that was caused by governments intent to solve all problems?

I suggest there is a better explanation, inspired by the work of economist and political philosopher Anthony de Jasay. The growing discontent with the state comes from its inherent incapacity to simultaneously satisfy non-identical individuals. Otherwise, its growing powers over more than a century would have done it already. What happens is that democratic governments and their politicians vie to respond to the demands of a majority of voters and thus buy their support (as well as the support of vocal special interests). This generates discontent among those who finance the buying or are handicapped by the government’s new interventions. Think about individuals who find themselves on the wrong side of official discrimination. These angry voters stake their own claims to government largesse, calling it “social justice.” A new vague of discontent is generated that the government will try to defuse to the detriment of other citizens.

The more interventionist the state is, the more people will complain. Like the Red Queen and Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, the state must run faster just to stay in place and even more to move forward.

We should not discard the valid complaints of ordinary people against the bullying they have been subject to by the political establishment over the last several decades, from licensure laws to galloping criminalization and coercive discrimination. Remember the legal apartheid initiated against smokers, who were mostly from the low classes, and the private venues that wanted to welcome them–bars, fast food joints, or even outdoor places. (I would add and change a few things in my Econlib article of a quarter of a century ago on “The Economics of Smoking,” but my private-property argument against the so-called “externalities” of smoking was correct.) The major cause of discontent lies in the pretensions and power of interventionist democratic governments. But it is an error to believe that a populist government can stop the discontent cascade. Populism is nothing but totalitarian democracy with a human face: that of a strongman. It generates further dirigisme, polarization, and discontent.

How will the Red Queen race end? Not well, de Jasay believes (see the last chapter of his seminal book The State—the interpretation that follows differs only slightly from de Jasay’s). Being continuously asked to give and not to take away, to intervene and not to harm, state rulers will use up all their discretionary power just to remain in command. They have to promise more to outbid their political competitors. The state will thus need more and more economic power. It will fuse political and economic power into “state capitalism.” It will stealthily nationalize the economy, through regulation and cronyism rather than via the Marxist route. Eventually, it will have no choice but to abolish electoral competition and the other checks and balances in order to effectively pursue the happiness of the people–and the power of the rulers. The state will have gained unlimited power. In this brave new world, the former citizens will in effect have become property of the state like slaves belonged to their masters on the plantations of yesteryear. The state will have become the Plantation State.

We don’t have to be as pessimistic as de Jasay to understand that, all over the world, such is the path our democratic leviathans are following.

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Sometimes, one must render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to DALL-E’s what is DALL-E’s. The featured image of this post was produced by DALL-E after only one prompt: “Create an image showing the Red Queen and Alice (in Lewis Carroll’s *Through the Looking-Glass*) running faster and faster just to stay in place.”