Knowledge And Decisions

It may easily be foreseen that almost all the able and ambitious members of a democratic community will labor unceasingly to extend the powers of government, because they all hope at some time or other to wield those powers themselves. It would be a waste of time to attempt to prove to them that extreme centralization may be injurious to the state, since they are centralizing it for their own benefit. Among the public men of democracies, there are hardly any but men of great disinterestedness or extreme mediocrity who seek to oppose the centralization of government; the former are scarce, the latter powerless.⁷⁷

RATIONALES FOR POWER

The discussion thus far has been primarily in terms of the manner in which government has expanded more so than the underlying rationales behind such changes. Perhaps the simplest rationale for expansion of the areas and powers of governmental decision-making is that a crisis has thrust new responsibilities upon the government, and it would be derelict in its duty if it did not expand its powers to meet them. Among the more prominent ideological rationales for expanded government is a “maldistribution” of status, rights, or benefits — any existing process or result constituting “maldistribution” to those who would prefer something else. For example, equality can be a maldistribution of status from the standpoint of racists, and the correction of this “maldistribution” was in fact a central feature of Hitler’s program. Power may also be sought on the rationale that it is needed to offset already existing power. Yet another rationale for expanded government is the creation of national “purpose” — consensus being viewed as a consumer good (implicitly, worth its cost).

CRISIS

Even the most democratic and constitutional governments tend to expand their powers during wartime, and in natural disaster areas it is common to station troops and declare martial law even in peacetime. Such buildups of governmental power tend to dissipate with the passage of the emergency, which is generally easily recognized by the public at large.

An enduring concentration of governmental power requires either that the public perception of crisis be deliberately prolonged or that the crisis be used to establish institutions which will outlast the crisis itself.

A deliberately prolonged crisis atmosphere can be managed indefinitely only by a totalitarian state, able to depict itself to its people as threatened on all sides by enemies — and able to exclude contrary interpretations of events. This has in fact been the basic posture of totalitarian states in general. For example, the reiterated theme of “peace,” renunciations of expansionism in general and in particular, and an outright ridicule of foreign fears to the contrary were common to Hitler⁷⁸ and to Stalin in the 1930s — though the latter annexed even more territory than the former from the beginning of World War II to the Nazi’s invasion of the U.S.S.R.⁷⁹ Even the most aggressive totalitarian state can claim to be threatened by others — and can even cite evidence, since its aggressive military preparations are sure to stimulate at least some military preparedness on the part of other countries. Hitler in the 1930s was perhaps the classic example of this propaganda inversion of cause and effect, though certainly not the last.