In 1987, economic historian Robert Higgs published Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government. The book was a watershed event in the study of the growth of the American state. Higgs brilliantly and consistently argued that the rise of the modern megaŠstate can be traced to one phenomena: government's reactions to crises - imaginary as well as real. And the two types of crises which led to leviathan, according to Higgs, were economic recessions and wars, with the latter of the two being the more important. Indeed, he argued that war was the primary instrument for the collectivization of the United States in the twentieth century.
America's involvement in the two world wars not only laid the groundwork for the New Deal, but was necessary for its completion. Only through World War II could FDR gain the power necessary to complete his domestic agenda; not even the Great Depression was sufficiently exigent to justify the massive taxation and regulation that was central to the development and implementation of the New Deal.
In the tradition of Crisis and Leviathan comes Bruce Porter's War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Modern Politics (Free Press, 380 pages) Porter, a professor of political science at Brigham Young University, has, in this book, written an excellent account of warfare's effects on nationŠstates over the last 500 years. He presents an informed analysis of the importance of war in the formation of early nationŠstates, but more importantly, he ably explores the military foundations of modern welfare states (Britain, France, and the U.S.), as well as former totalitarian states (particularly, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union).
To Porter, like Higgs, the key to understanding the rise of statism in all its insidious forms lies in one's grasp of the importance of war. For warfare, argues Porter, gave rise to the "collectivist state," which he believes, in its totality, is comprised of three separate states essentially rolled into one: the "regulatory state," which is characterized by extensive governmental intervention into the national economy; the "mass state," in which political privilege is divorced from class or economic status and social egalitarianism is pursued as the ultimate end; and the "welfare state," which assumes direct responsibility for the wellŠbeing of its citizens. Without "wartime production" there would not have been the modern "regulatory state"; without the conscription of young males and the ensuing labor shortage there would not have been the meteoric rise of powerful labor unions nor the mass entrance of females into the workplace, both of which Porter cites as characteristics of the "mass state"; and without the tax policies pursued during war there would not have been the modern "welfare state." In short, without warfare there couldn't have been the massive social engineering the United States has witnessed over the last 80 years.
If Newt Gingrich and his fellow "revolutionaries" are serious about rolling back the size and scope of the federal government, they mustn't concentrate on repealing the welfare state alone (although this is certainly a worthy task); they must, as Bruce Porter has so eloquently written, repeal the warfare state as well, for this is truly the heart of leviathan. MR