Essay

The Burden of the Soldier

Earlier this month, a little-discussed headline read “Muted Ceremony Marks End Of Iraq War.”[1] Of course, neither the war in Iraq nor the occupation are really ending. Thousands of private security contractors remain in the country (as do the fifteen thousand employees of the Baghdad embassy).[2] The end of conventional military operations reflects the changing usefulness of the soldier to the state.

Generally speaking, the soldier’s role as provider of security is secondary to his role in propaganda. Regardless of an individual soldier’s motivation in joining the military, his primary function is to serve as a rallying cry for the fellow subjects of his state.

The nefarious motives behind wars, the endless political treacheries, and the massive fortunes accumulated by military industries must all hide behind the image of the soldier. He is portrayed as the best reflection of a grateful society, and elevated to the shining status of a religious icon, in the hope of blinding everyone to the cesspool of narcissism, corruption, and corporatism behind every war.

. . . the fact that parades, monuments, political speeches invoking their suffering, and streams of fawning news coverage are not only nonexistent for mercenaries, but scarcely imaginable, says much about the role and primary purpose of the soldier.

The soldier’s role, however, also burdens the state. Once an ongoing condition of war is cemented as the new normal, the soldier becomes, in many ways, a nuisance to the state. Soldiers invoke their own image and become outspoken critics, either of incompetence within their endeavor or of the endeavor itself. Soldiers write blogs, record embarrassing pictures and videos, and share them readily through social media, eroding the myths upon which the state relies.

Also, to justify the suffering of soldiers, the state is increasingly pressured to explain its endeavor and demonstrate progress. Neither mercenaries, mindful of their employment status, nor clandestine forces, carefully screened and highly disciplined, present such a burden. . . .

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Is the United States Too Big to Succeed?

Although European libertarians continue to produce great works of theory and activism, the United States has been, and seems to remain, the epicenter of the libertarian movement. There are no prominent protests in Europe calling for less governmental help as there are in the United States. Murray Rothbard’s essay “Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty” refers to the United States as “the great home of radical liberalism.” In 1996, Dr. Yuri Maltsev presented a lecture at a Ludwig von Mises Institute summit entitled “Why America Must Be Saved,” making the case for the United States as the greatest hope in the struggle for freedom. Writing favorably of the tea-party movement, Peruvian writer and recent Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa distinguished the American individualist tradition as stronger than the European one:

In the United States, individualism has never had the bad press it had in Europe. In the purest American tradition, it is not the state but the citizen who is first responsible for failure or success.

Despite the more muted prevalence of libertarians in Europe, they enjoy a dynamic absent in America: strong regional identity reinforced by language and cultural barriers far greater than the relatively homogenized United States. As Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe might say, Europe has more “international anarchy,” . . .

However, what remains of European regionalism may very well do more to promote the cause of liberty than the more vigorous, better organized libertarian movement in the United States. . . .

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The Violence and Justice Monopoly

This essay was heavily influenced by one of my (now-former, 2023) intellectual heroes, Hans Hermann Hoppe:

Almost all of us hold two beliefs which contradict a third near-universal belief. The first is that a state, however else defined, is a geographic monopoly of security and justice. One cannot appeal a ruling beyond the state, and whatever private providers of security and justice may exist, they do so in pronounced subservience to and supervision by the state.

The second is that monopolies invariably cause high prices and low quality. Is it so absurd to unite these two self-evident ideas and suggest that states are poor providers of security and justice?

This, of course, rattles to its very foundation a belief most people consider unassailable: that states must invariably provide us, the gray, primitive, violent, purposeless masses, with security and justice — or else civilization itself would plunge into darkness and despair.

(Read more from Daily Anarchist)

Maybe The 99% Are Right

Maybe the “99%” are right. Maybe we should take all the money from the richest 1%.

Perhaps, however, the protesters don’t go far enough. We should then find the most beautiful 1% and scar their faces with box cutters. Then we should find the smartest 1% and damage their brains. We should find the most athletic 1% and break their legs. We should find the healthiest 1% and feed them poison.

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Escape from Horodok

Published in the November 6, 2011 issue of the Ukrainian Weekly:

On Sunday, I took the marshutka to Horodok again to spend time with Aunt Stefa’s family. I didn’t want them picking me up at the bus station when I could walk, so this time, I went early, walked through town, and didn’t give them a call until I passed the train tracks.

I was determined to go home that evening, for once to resist their insistence that I spend the night. I simply wanted to do some work that night, as well as some laundry for tomorrow. They first asked about my evening plans as I removed my jacket. “Tonight I’ll go home,” I said. “Nooooo way. You can stay here.”

“I think tonight I’ll go home,” I repeated. “Don’t be silly,” they said.

During lunch they asked me again, and again when we loaded the car to drive to a different relative who’d just had a son.

Each time, I told them I was going home, and each time they acted like it was the most outrageous thing in the world. I didn’t argue, but my resolve grew.

We ate, drank, and skyped with my mother in New York before piling into Liubomyr’s car, presumably to drive back to Aunt Maria’s, who’d joined us at dinner, then to Aunt Stefa’s. I asked him to drop me off at the bus station, and everybody — Aunt Stefa, Aunt Maria, my two nieces, my cousin — reacted with horror and surprise, as if I hadn’t been telling them I was going home since the minute of my arrival.

“I wanted to give you marmalane,” Aunt Stefa said. “and pickles, mushroom preserves, verenyky.”

“Next time,” I said.

“Andri” — her son-in-law — “can drive you home in the morning,” she said for the fifth or six time. Andri was a taxi driver and had driven me back to L’viv in the past.

“I want to do some work,” I said.

“You have to come to our place, the marshutky aren’t running any more,” Aunt Stefa said, her voice slightly defiant. For a moment, she thought she’d won.

“They run until ten. I have another hour.” (I had checked.)

“Liubomyr, seriously, drop me off at the bus station,” I said.

“Noooo,” everybody shouted. My nieces said something about her English homework which I usually help her with when I visit.

I did my best to keep my voice pleasant, but firm. I love these people. “I’m not going to argue, but I am going to go home tonight,” I said. My third cousin laughed a little, for which I was happy. I felt like was murdering the pet hamster they’re all so excited about.

“Drop me off here,” I said as we passed the bus station.

“Noooo,” everybody screamed again.

“Are you crazy?” Aunt Stefa said. “It’s late. You’ll sleep at our place.”

“If you don’t drop me off, I’ll have much farther to walk,” I told Liubomyr.

“You can’t do it this way,” Aunt Maria chimed in, her voice sounding reasonable. “You can sleep at my place.” In the past, Aunt Maria and Aunt Stefa had both made me swear to spend the night at their place on the same night. They don’t argue between themselves, but they argue with me, and make me answer why I didn’t come to one or the other. It’s flattering but exhausting.

As the bus station vanished behind us, Aunt Stefa quietly explained to everybody how I would spend the evening at her place. “We’ll have tea, you can play cards . . . ”

“And you’ll help with my English homework,” said my ever-enthusiastic niece.

“. . . we’ll fold out the divan like we always do, and in the morning I’ll give you some food and Andri will drive you home.”

I had made a point of sitting near the door when we loaded the car. So when Liubomyr stopped near Aunt Maria’s to let her out, I made a quick exit from the car, my niece’s little hands too slow and too feeble to restrain me.

“Where in the world are you going?” said Aunt Stefa with genuine surprise, as if I hadn’t spent the last half hour, as well as most of the day, telling them.

Everybody got out and stood on the narrow, snow-covered street, by Aunt Maria’s gate. They looked to be in utter shock, and I was quick to take advantage of the confusion. I kissed each one of their stunned faced, thanking them for the wonderful evening and telling them how much I enjoy their company. I got through all of them before the shock wore off.

“You can’t,” pleaded Aunt Stefa. Each of my nieces, Aunt Stefa’s granddaughters, grabbed one of my hands and pulled me. I was prepared for a physical struggle. I have a few years of experience in brazilian jiu jitsu and blue belt. I felt confident I could out grapple my relatives and get away without anyone being injured.

“When I was in the army, forty paratroopers used to listen to me,” I said.

Liubomyr, who stood by his car door watched and laughed.

I was preparing to break the grips of my nieces, but Aunt Stefa, finally revealing a limit to her insistence, told them to stop because it wasn’t polite.

“Why do you want to go?” Aunt Maria said.

For the ninth or tenth time I told them I had a lot of work to do, and that I work better when I wake up in my own bed. Also that I needed to do some laundry for tomorrow.

They talked about darkness, Aunt Stefa’s marmalade, crime, and the possibility of Andri driving me home in the morning, but I could tell I was finally wearing them down. Their pleas lacked the vigor of the earlier ones.

I asked whether I was walking to the bus station or getting a ride. Liubomyr said, “let’s go.”

I kissed them all once again. Now their faces looked like I really did murder their hamster. Liubomyr turned skillfully on the shoulderless, snowy road, and I waved goodbye through the window. Only one of my nieces waved back.

—

In the evening, Aunt Stefa called and sounded surprised that I’d gotten home so quickly. She asked if I was angry. “Of course not,” I said. She asked why I wanted to leave, and I told her that I have a lot of work and feel scared that I might not finish. She told me Andri would bring me the bag of food tomorrow in his taxi, and I said it wasn’t worth it.

She started pleading again. I wanted to get to my laundry, so I acquiesced. He would drop it off in the evening.

After lecturing to a friend’s economics class about traditions of economic liberty in the U.S. vs. Ukraine, I hurried home and made it just at seven. At nine, Aunt Stefa called and told me Andri couldn’t make it.

Andri is a very angry guy, and I had a suspicious he’d consider that bag of food as excessive a gesture as I did. He’s much more insistent, though, and quick to shout. I can’t help but try to be polite, especially to people expressing such profound hospitality and concern.

That evening’s insistence was out of character for me, but I wanted to assert my independence to these relatives who I’ve known for less than two years. Perhaps that’s why it had an effect on me, and why I want to write about it.

—

Aunt Stefa called me the next morning and told me to meet her at L’viv’s bus station tomorrow.

“I’ll bring the food and give it to you, then take the marshutka back.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Aunt Stefa,” I said. “Thank you, but it’s not worth it.”

“Of course it is!” she said.

“I’ll get it next time. I don’t want you to spend two hours on the marshutka just to bring me food. You’re food is good, but it’s not worth it.”

“When next time? I’ll bring it to the bus station and hand it to you.”

I’m much better at winning these battles when I’m prepared. When I enter the situation knowing from the start what I need to do. Also, in English, I’m much, much better at the delicate art of polite rejection. In Ukrainian, I only manage to piece together crude expressions — “the food is good, but no thank you,” for example. Also, (my last excuse) she called me when I was still in bed. I folded.

“At least come over for coffee,” I said.

“Good,” she said. I sensed her mind already made intricate calculations concerning marshutky, busses, hours, glass jars, money. It seems to be a very elaborate challenge which she enjoyed.

As we agreed, she called me a third time that afternoon to arrange details.

“I’m going to come with Liuba [my cousin]. We can go to the museum where Andri [a different Andri, her son] is working [as a guard]. He’ll give us a tour.”

“Wonderful,” I said.

“You’re not too busy?”

“No,” I lied.

“What time is good for you?” she asked.

“I’m busy, but my time is flexible. What time is good for you?” I said.

“Any time. Just tell us when.”

“Six.”

She paused. “I can’t make six. I thought we’d drop the kids off at school and then go.”

“What time is that?”

“Any time. What suits you?” She asked again.

I guessed, then guessed again. When my guess, 1pm, was close enough, she suggested 2pm, and told me she’d call when she left Horodok. “If that’s okay with you,” she added.

Review of “Utopia in Four Movements”

This guest column appeared in the Daily Iowan on Nov 11, 2011:

I think my Ukrainian heritage fuels my twin obsessions with Soviet history and economics. Sadly, this often puts me on opposing ideological ground from my good friends and fellow alumni of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, which recently helped bring “Utopia in Four Movements,” to Iowa City’s local, tax-supported theater.

Sam Green, the filmmaker who narrated the exploration of “the battered state of the utopian impulse,” on one hand described socialism has having gone “monstrously wrong,” and on the other, expressed open sentimentality for the Russian and Maoist revolutions. He showed pictures of executed Cambodians and also said a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book was among his favorite possessions.

For any readers who may have left the theater with a sense of moral ambiguity, I offer this brief history lesson.

In “The Black Book of Communism,” French researchers estimate communist China slaughtered 65 million of its own citizens. Estimates of Soviet citizens killed by their leaders range from 20 million to 62 million made by political science professor R. J. Rummel. In Cambodia, after an unholy combination of Marx and Rousseau, they attempted an agrarian based communist society and managed, in an astonishingly short period of time, to slaughter almost a third of their population. Perhaps Stalin was right. Killing one person is a tragedy. Killing millions is only a statistic.

The sound of societies turning into gigantic meat grinders was accompanied by three choruses from leftist intellectuals. One sang “It’s not so bad.” Perhaps its leading performer was New York Times reporter Walter Duranty who won a Pulitzer Prize for dismissing the starvation of six to ten million Ukrainians as “malignant propaganda.”

The second chorus sang “next time”: Forget Lenin’s hostages and mass executions, forget the extermination of the Don Cossacks. The right people weren’t in charge. Forget the Gulag Archipelago. Forget China’s Great Leap Forward and North Korea’s Arduous March. Forget the cannibalism. Revoke private property and this next time, we will deliver paradise.

The last chorus sang “that’s not real communism.” For them, I present some of Marx’s and Engels’s less publicized writing: In the January 1849 edition of Marx’s journal “Neue Rheinische Zeitung,” Engels wrote, “Basques, Scottish Highlanders, Serbs are racial trash and will have to be destroyed.” Marx wrote in his “People’s Paper,” April 16, 1852, “The classes and races too weak to master the new conditions of life must give way. They must perish in the Revolutionary Holocaust.”

Mr. Green showed a picture of Bolshevik soldiers marching during the Russian Revolution and wondered how exciting it would have felt to be among them. By what standards does he go sentimental? If it’s brute force combined with a glorious vision of the future, he could easily include Germany’s National Socialists (i.e. Nazis) on his list of supposedly noble and only slightly misguided movements. They had a great vision too, for the living.

Contrary to what I learned in school, the National Socialists of Germany were not ideologically opposite from the Marxist-Leninist Socialists of the Soviet Union. Their great difference lay in the fact that one slaughtered millions according to race, and the other slaughtered millions according to “class” — the ambiguous, undefined term at the center of Marxism. They were two wings of the same cult of state power, determined to carve society into a better version of itself using bullets and bayonets. It deserves no sentimentalism.

Let’s hope the “state of the utopian impulse” remains battered.

Finding the Birthplace of Ludwig von Mises

by Mykola Bunyk and Roman Skaskiw

The problem of determining the house in which the famous economist and liberal thinker was born acquired urgency several months ago with an initiative by Ukraine’s small Austrolibertarian community to unveil a memorial plaque this September for the 130th anniversary of Ludwig von Mises’s birth.

The initial relevant information about the Mises family concerned Ludwig’s great-grandfather Ludwig Mayer Rachmiel Mises. According to the website of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv, Ludwig’s great grandfather Mayer Rachmiel owned buildings on Market Square 18 and Old Jewish Street 7 (Rynok Square 18 and Starojevreis’ka 7), two prominent addresses in the center of Lviv connected by a courtyard.

(Read more from mises.org)