Compulsory military service has become almost universal, foreign and civil wars have increased in frequency and in brutality, and the process of political centralization has advanced further than ever before. Kings have to fund their wars largely out of private funds because of a clear and developed class consciousness among the ruled, and their wars thus tend to be limited. The public views monarchical wars generally as private conflicts between different ruling families, and kings are thus compelled to recognize a distinction between combatants and non-combatants and to target their war efforts specifically against each other and their respective private properties. In contrast, democratic wars tend to be total wars. Resistance against higher taxes to fund a war is increasingly considered to be treachery or treason.
Conscription becomes the rule, rather than the exception.
Hoppe does not advocate a return to the ancien regime, an option he considers impossible. What he does suggest is that the fundamentally totalitarian nature of social democracy and universal suffrage be recognized. It is never easy to review such a large collection of essays, each of which makes an important contribution to the whole. The Costs of War could not be timelier.