“From the twelfth to the eighteenth century governmental authority grew continuously. The process was understood by all who saw it happening; it stirred them to incessant protest and to violent reaction.

“In later times its growth has continued at an accelerated pace, and its extension has brought a corresponding extension of war. And now we no longer understand the process, we no longer protest, we no longer react. This quiescence of ours is a new thing, for which Power has to thank the smoke-screen in which it has wrapped itself. Formerly it could be seen, manifest in the person of the king, who did not disclaim being the master he was, and in whom human passions were discernible. Now, masked in anonymity, it claims to have no existence of its own, and to be but the impersonal and passionless instrument of the general will.

“But that is clearly a fiction. Today as always Power is in the hands of a group of men who control the power house. . . . All that has changed is that it has now been made easy for the ruled to change the personnel of the leading wielders of Power. Viewed from one angle, this weakens Power, because the wills which control a society’s life can, at the society’s pleasure, be replaced by other wills, in which it feels more confidence.

“But by opening the prospect of Power to all the ambitious talents, this arrangement makes the extension of Power much easier. Under the ancien regime, society’s moving spirits, who had . . . no chance of a share in Power, were quick to denounce its smallest encroachment.

“Now . . . when everyone is potentially a minister, no one is concerned to cut down an office to which he aspires one day himself, or to put sand in a machine which he means to use himself when his turn comes.”

Bertrand de Jouvenel (1903-1987) On Power, New York, 1949, pp. 9-10, as quoted by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, Kluwer Academic, Norwell, MA, 1989, 161-162.