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Public Choice

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12.10.2019

Salem with and without witches, and also Geneva and Berlin

verfasst von: Peter Nannestad

Erschienen in: Public Choice | Ausgabe 3-4/2021

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Abstract

Peter Bernholz’s cases of supreme values exhibit authoritarianism, totalitarianism and terror. Supreme values are, however, a necessary, but not sufficient condition for authoritarian or totalitarian rule. That observation raises the question of the conditions under which supreme value systems result or do not result in authoritarianism and totalitarianism (or terrorism). I address the question using a case study based on Article 1.1 of the German constitution (Grundgesetz; GG), which fulfils the twin criteria for being a supreme value (being at the top of a lexicographical ordering of values and not being substitutable with others), but is not associated with authoritarianism, totalitarianism and terror. The contrary is the case. I compare the supreme value institutionalized in Article 1.1 GG to two supreme value systems that historically have been associated with Bernholz’s cases, namely Calvinism in 16th century Geneva and German Nazism (1933–1945). I consider three explanations for the association of supreme values with authoritarianism, totalitarianism and terror: when the content of the supreme value is malevolent to some groups; when the supreme value has been imposed on a society; and when supreme values facilitate rent extraction. In the cases that I consider, rent extraction seems to be a compelling explanation.

Vorheriger Artikel Investigation in search of truth

Nächster Artikel Correction to: The transformation of supreme values: Evidence from Poland on salvation through civic engagement

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Thus, Goebbels was right when in 1943 he wrote in his diary “Today, we are living in a world of annihilating and being annihilated” (Brechtken 2017, p. 178). Likewise, the allied demand for total surrender of Germany (and Japan) was just a logical consequence of the Second World War being a war that involved (at least) two incompatible supreme value systems.

Naphy (1994, p. 182; emphasis added) vividly describes the clash between two supreme value systems in Geneva in the 1550s: “Perrin and his supporters saw themselves as the true defenders of Geneva’s independence. They styled themselves ‘les Infants de Genève’, the epithet of the earlier Revolutionary party. Their opponents and the French felt they were the sole champions of God’s word and godly living. The two factions held to their positions sincerely and were willing to consider and countenance almost any means useful for securing their power; compromise was a practical impossibility”.

I take it to be uncontroversial that Germany is a functioning democracy, as all available indices of democracy indicate.

Bernholz (2017, p. 37, Table 4.1) dates “Calvin’s Geneva” from 1534 to 1535. I date Calvin’s theocratic-totalitarian regime in Geneva from 1541 to his final victory over the Perrinists in 1555. The Salem witch trials to which my title alludes occurred in 1692 and 1693.

According to German legal theory, no possible legal justification exists for violating Article 1.1 GG (“nicht rechtfertigungsfähig”; see Dreier and Wittreck 2012, p. XXV).

In the Weimar constitution, all rights provisions were purely declaratory (or expressive in the sense of Hillman 2010).

On agenda-setting, and especially the government’s policy agenda, see Kingdon (2011), among others.

Aust (2017, p. 768) gives as his source for the story a German TV journalist who later had spoken to one of the meeting’s participants. Thus, Aust is a third-hand source (at best). I nevertheless rely on the story because Aust had no obvious incentive to make it up. It is not central to the narrative he tries to relay, nor to his argumentative line. It likewise is not obvious that anyone else might benefit from making the story up.

Article 1.1 GG is valid for all individuals, not only for German citizens.

In 1951, Lüth had called for a boycott of a new film directed by Veit Harlan because of Harlan’s role as one of the script’s editors and as the director of the notorious antisemitic movie “Jud Süss”. Harlan, the film’s producer and distributor, sought and obtained a court injunction against the boycott call, based on §826 in the German Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, or BGB). Thus, the matter was a civil law case. However, Lüth took the case to the Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), claiming that his basic right to free speech (Article 5.1 GG) had been infringed upon. The central question then became whether a constitutional provision could and should be applied to a civil law case. The constitutional court answered that question in the affirmative and ruled in favor of Lüth.

So does the supreme value system of Marxism in both its Leninist and its Trotskyist versions. Here the “racial enemy” of Nazism was just replaced by the class enemy (capitalists, kulaks, counter-revolutionaries, and so forth), to be harmed as much as possible and finally eliminated. In 1987, that apparent parallelism led the German historian Poul Nolte to put forth the so-called Nolte thesis, according to which the Nazis’ crimes merely had been reactions to and adaptations of the bolshevist class war. That thesis started the “dispute of the historians” (“Historikerstreit”) in Germany, from which Nolte emerged as loser (Piper 1987).

Ultimately, this is a question of interpretation. For an assessment of Calvinism that differs markedly from mine, see for example Hunt (2012). While I consider Calvin’s regime in Geneva in the period 1548–1555 an instrumentalization of Calvinism, Hunt sees it as an expression of Calvinism’s quintessence. However, since Hunt (2012) is openly intended as a warning against an alleged neo-Calvinist upsurge in American religious life, neutrality should probably not be expected to be among its foremost qualities.

While the five points of Calvinism post-date the Calvinist regime in Geneva, they mainly codified existing doctrinal understandings.

It seems more difficult to find examples of the opposite. Anyhow, German-speaking readers might remember that in Goethe’s Faust I, Mephisto introduces himself to Faust as “… ein Teil von jener Kraft/die stets das Böse will/und stets das Gute schafft” (“… a part of that force/that always wills the evil/and always produces the good”).

By definition, in equilibrium society can have only one supreme value (system).

The fourth occupying power, the Soviet Union, had no formal role in the process, since the constitution would be valid for the Länder occupied by the three occupying western countries only.

On several occasions, the western allies made it very clear that they possessed veto power with respect to the future German constitution, and that they would not hesitate to use it if the German side failed to devise acceptable proposals. After some probing, the Germans realized that certain allied demands were, in fact, non-negotiable (Benz 2018, pp. 295–306; Feldkamp 2019).

I use the term “rent extraction” to denote all situations in which some individual or group uses the powers of the state to further their own interests at the expense of others, regardless of the means used. Thus, extortion, accepting bribes, and theft or embezzlement (if committed by public officials) all count as rent extraction activities. That is a somewhat broader usage of the term than in most of the literature on rents, rent seeking and rent extraction (see Congleton 2019).

Alternatively, one could label the groups as the “strong” and the “weak” in a Nietzschean sense (Hillman 2004, 2019, pp. 331–334).

It would be naive not to consider the possibility of rent extraction through appropriation of the (Catholic) church’s possessions an important incentive underlying the support given by the rulers of Northern European countries to the Lutheran Reformation. Most of them were most likely interested more in wealth than in theology.

For posterity, Göring has probably come to stand out as the epitome of the grabbing top-Nazi. However, the other leading Nazis did not behave differently qualitatively. In his brilliant deconstruction of the myth of the Nazi armaments minister, Albert Speer, as a “decent Nazi”, Brechtken also describes some of Speer’s rent extraction activities (Brechtken 2017, pp. 130–136, 251–256). Unsurprisingly, the decent Nazi Speer also profited personally from Aryanization.

Taxes were increased, however, for those with high and very high incomes. But those taxpayers represented a relatively small minority.

For these and other reasons, Aly has dubbed the Nazi regime a “dictatorship of favors” (“Gefälligkeitsdiktatur”). While probably meant to be sharp-witted, it is certainly disrespectful to the many to whom the Nazi regime did not extend any favors.

The leaders of the Anabaptists in Münster, though from very modest backgrounds, had lived lives of princely splendor during their regime. Some sources claim that one of them, Jan van Leyden, had his wife sentenced to death because she had rebuked him for his luxurious lifestyle, and that he had beheaded her himself. Under interrogation he admitted having had his wife sentenced to death, albeit only for disobedience (Der Kirchenkreis 2019). In any case, using the power of public office to do away with one’s spouse in the case of marital disagreements can in itself be considered a (rare) kind of rent extraction.

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Titel: Salem with and without witches, and also Geneva and Berlin
verfasst von: Peter Nannestad
Publikationsdatum: 12.10.2019
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Public Choice / Ausgabe 3-4/2021
Print ISSN: 0048-5829
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-7101
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-019-00725-0

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