Democracy: The God That Failed

Democracy: The God That Failed is a 2001 book by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, containing a series of thirteen essays on the subject of democracy. The book "examines modern democracies in the light of various evident failures" which, in Hoppe's view, include rising unemployment rates, expanding public debt, and insolvent social security systems. He attributes democracy's failures to pressure groups seeking increased government expenditures, regulations and taxation and a lack of counter-measures to them. Potential solutions he discusses include secession, "shifting of control over the nationalised wealth from a larger, central government to a smaller, regional one" and "complete freedom of contract, occupation, trade and migration introduced".[1] Hoppe concludes that democracy is the primary cause of a wave of decivilization sweeping the world since World War I, and that democracy must be delegitimized.

Democracy: The God That Failed
Cover of the first edition
AuthorHans-Hermann Hoppe
SubjectDemocracy
Publication date
2001
Media typePrint (hardcover and paperback)
Pages304
ISBN978-0765808684
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Hoppe characterizes democracy as "publicly owned government", and when he compares it with monarchy—"privately owned government"—he concludes that the latter is preferable; however, Hoppe aims to show that both monarchy and democracy are deficient systems compared to his preferred structure for advancing civilization—something he calls the natural order, a system free of both taxation and coercive monopoly in which jurisdictions freely compete for adherents. In his Introduction, he lists other names used elsewhere to refer to this concept of "natural order", including "ordered anarchy", "private property anarchism", "anarcho-capitalism", "autogovernment", "private law society", and "pure capitalism".[2]

The title of the work is an allusion to The God that Failed, a 1949 work in which six authors who formerly held communist views describe their experience of and subsequent disillusion with communism.

Reception

Walter Block, a colleague of Hoppe's at the Mises Institute, reviewed the book in The American Journal of Economics and Sociology and gave it a generally favorable review. He concludes, "This book will take by storm the field of political economy, and no one interested in these topics can afford to be without it."[3]

Publishing history

English

French: Démocratie, le dieu qui a échoué.

    • Preface by Pascal Salin.
    • Hardcover. ISBN 979-8622535567.

German: Demokratie: Der Gott, der keiner ist.

  • Manuscriptum [Leipzig, Germany]
    • Afterword by Lorenz Jäger.
    • Hardcover. ISBN 3933497868.
    • Preface. (Vorwort zur deutschen Ausgabe).

Italian: Democrazia: il dio che ha fallito.

  • Cloth. ISBN 8885140777.

Korean

Spanish: Monarquia, Democracia y Orden Natural: Una Vision Austriaca de la era Americana.

Polish: Demokracja: bóg, który zawiódł.

  • Fijorr [Warsaw, Poland] (January 2006)
    • Paperback. ISBN 978-8389812216.

Portuguese: Democracia: O Deus que Falhou.

  • Instituto Ludwig von Mises Brasil [São Paulo, Brazil] (2014)

References
  1. R.M. Pearce, National Observer (Australia), No. 56, Autumn 2003.
  2. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Introduction to Democracy, The God That Failed, reprinted at Ludwig von Mises Institute website.
  3. Block, Walter E. (2002). "Democracy: The God that Failed: A Review". American Journal of Economics and Sociology. 61. SSRN 1946360. American Journal of Economics and Sociology No. 3.
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