War, propaganda, and the fight for liberty

The dramatic growth of public sectors in the West during the 20th century was largely the result of war. States experienced some of their most significant expansions during the two World Wars. This included mass conscription, the expansion of income taxation, economic planning and rationing, labour and price controls, national identity registration, and, last but not least, propaganda and censorship. Much of this expansion persisted after the wars had ended rather than returning fully to pre-war levels.

The Modern State Wages Modern War

In this context, it is important to separate war from other violent, conflictual activities. Not only do states alone possess the means necessary to wage war, but their motives and interests also differ fundamentally from those of ordinary citizens and enterprises. War is thus a stark reminder of the difference in interests that exist between the state and society. As is well known, the beneficiaries of war are politically connected economic interests, like large financial institutions and defence contractors.

With the advent of the modern state, its demands on society increased dramatically. If only states engage in war, then only modern states engage in modern war, which inevitably will impact all society to some extent. Murray Rothbard explained this distinction in Anatomy of the State (1974): ‘a war between rulers was converted into a war between peoples, with each people coming to the defense of its rulers in the erroneous belief that the rulers were defending them.’

Modern war is thus also social in its effect, since society invariably bears its consequences; not only with the physical destruction of civilian infrastructure, but also with the severe economic and even cultural fallouts that modern war entails (also for a victorious state), in the form of debt, refugees, inflation, unemployment, etc.

Propaganda in Wartime

The role of propaganda is precisely to align as far as possible the population with the interests of the state. Nationalism has often been employed by states to mobilise public support for war and to direct societal resources toward conflict. For instance, mass conscription was not voluntary but nevertheless required nationalist propaganda to make young men willing to risk their life in the modern state’s war.

Propaganda works because it is sophisticated; the state puts resources into perfecting it. It also works because the majority is quite easily deceived. Most people do not apply the same reason or dedicate the same time to politics as they do to areas of personal interest. As James Burnham wrote in The Machiavellians (1943), it is ‘exceedingly difficult for men to be scientific, or logical, about social and political problems.’

The level of propaganda and disinformation is highest when the stakes are greatest for the state, such as during wartime, even though modern access to information is enormous. The difficulty ordinary citizens face in seeing through propaganda is not a lack of information, as was the case a century ago, but a lack of training in political and media theory. As the ‘Machiavellian’ thinkers noted, since most people do not see any clear causality between foreign politics and their own lives, they remain largely uninformed about the former. Yet, this link exists, though it is an indirect and complex relationship.

There is in all modern states an informal and mostly concealed propaganda system. In the West, it is made up of many public-private partnerships of academia and think tanks, together with cooperative mainstream media organizations, often receiving public funding. This informal network is directed by the Western ruling oligarchy with the aim to manufacture the consent of society to the chosen policies of the state. This becomes particularly important in such high-stakes state activities as military conflict.

The ongoing war in Ukraine is communicated to the public through extensive propaganda and censorship by states on both sides of the conflict. Consequently, a person relying exclusively on Western mainstream media, without prior historical knowledge or access to alternative sources, cannot easily assess the conflict objectively. Western accounts, many of which draw heavily on Ukrainian sources, are often accepted uncritically as credible, whereas Russian accounts are routinely dismissed outright as propaganda.

Neutrality and Free Trade

Truth is not the only victim of war; commerce also suffers as modern nations engage in war. Protectionism and the tendency toward national isolation are both causes and consequences of fraught relations between states, directly heightening the risk of military conflict. This has been obvious in the ongoing economic tariffs and trade sanctions in place between the so-called ‘unipolar world’ led by Washington and the ‘multipolar world’ led by Beijing and Moscow.

Free trade, i.e. trade that is unobstructed by national or supranational state agencies, is among the strongest contributors to peaceful relations between nations. Open, trading societies have a vested interest in peaceful relations with their partners and are naturally more averse to war than closed, semi-autarkic regimes. As the adage often attributed to Frédéric Bastiat goes: ‘When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.’ Indeed, neutrality, non-alliance and free trade are themselves potent assurances and shields against foreign aggression, as Rothbard pointed out in his 1994 article, “Just War.”

Yet today, neutrality in foreign relations is no longer extolled; quite the opposite. Nations are being increasingly pressured to take sides in foreign conflicts and even to contribute directly to the war efforts of the belligerents. This pressure has become unmistakable with the war in Ukraine, as the United States and the European Union have actively pressured countries worldwide to take sides against Russia in a conflict that largely does not concern these third parties.

Societies can limit interventionism by their own states, both at home and abroad, like during the Vietnam War in the USA, but only if strong public pressure is applied. This is necessary to move towards peace between nations. The majority must then first start to see beyond wartime narratives and recognize that the actions of modern states abroad shape economic and political conditions at home. The struggle for peace is therefore inseparable from the struggle for liberty.