Taxanon

Taxanon

By John Taylor; 2007 January 13

I just finished a series of lectures-on-tape about Niccolo Machiavelli's works, especially the Prince and the Discourses. Here is some of what I learned.

Machiavelli has been called the "first modern man" because was the first to discuss not how things should be but how they actually are. Though not a historian in the modern meaning of the term, he was still the most perceptive *reader* of history, perhaps ever. He was especially insightful about the crux between politics and religion. The Elizabethan playwrights later portrayed him as anti-religious, as a mocker of those who place faith in God, but there is no evidence that Machiavelli was anything but an orthodox Christian. He just understood that for a leader qua leader, religion is just another piece on the chessboard. Religion is used and calculated for political purposes just like any other major aspect of life. (Baha'u'llah assumes the same thing in His Proclamation to the kings) The lecturer at one point asks, "Was Machiavelli a Machiavellian?" Answer, no.

Machiavelli was a republican. He accepted that a prince (meaning rule held in the hands of an individual) rules more ruthlessly and, if he knows his job, more efficiently than any other form of government. But only for a while; he builds a delicate house of cards that can stand temporarily, until a state comes out of crisis. The only time that a "he" rather than a "they" is best is when civic virtue has disappeared, crime is rampant and a country is teetering on the brink of anarchy.

Interestingly the course's lecturer suggests that William Shakespeare when he wrote Hamlet asked a perceptive question about the implications of Machiavelli's advice in "The Prince." The Bard asks: "What would happen if not only the prince was Machiavellian, but everybody else in society acted with the same cynical ruthlessness?" Polonius, for example, sends a servant off to spy on his son during his visit to Paris, and he is killed while spying on Hamlet and his mother. Answer: the result is just what happens at the end of the play, a Donnybrook of blood spilling. This is the big problem with rule by prince. A prince is more than just the meanest of a mean lot, top dog of a pack of vicious junkyard dogs. That, after all, is the situation he is supposed to change when he comes to power. The problem a tough style of leadership is contagious. It acts as role model for the next generation. As he acts, so parents act, and the next generation is raised, and soon the entire culture is warlike and ruthless.

Republicanism, on the other hand, is the kind of rule that is natural to a community where civic virtue predominates. Machiavelli was a republican bred in the bone; he firmly believed that republican government is the best possible form. Here is the definition of republicanism (it is crucial, basic, and I had forgotten it, so I repeat it here):

There are three simple forms of government, rule by one, rule by a few, and rule by many. These are termed monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. Each has big advantages and glaring drawbacks. Republicanism is a happy mix of all three, one that maximizes their advantages and minimizes their disadvantages.

As you know, Baha'u'llah in writing Queen Victoria praised her for ceding power to parliament; He advocated in the same letter a mixed form of parliamentary democracy and monarchy (He does not mention aristocracy but as I have suggested elsewhere it could be argued that the House of Justice is a kind of reinvigorated aristocracy). Thus in a sense for Baha'is God Himself has sided with Machiavelli's opinion that republicanism is the best of all possible forms of government. Nor are these the only ways in which Machiavelli is in close consonance with Baha'i ideas. In describing the centuries of early republican Rome (the coup of Julius Caesar ended the republic and began a long, tumultuous period known as Imperial Rome), Machiavelli sees a political situation then that can only be called Baha'i; for example, Machiavelli argues that the contentiousness of the early republic was a mark not of weakness but of strength. It was a time of what we would now call creative tension between the plebs and the pats, that is, the people and the elite. As the Master put it, "only after the clash of differing opinions is the light of truth revealed." As long as the two sides were balanced and had a say in decision making, the result was a stable, equitable regime for all concerned (unless of course you were a slave or a woman, and at this time the number of slaves was not nearly as huge as it became later on under the Caesars).

What blew my mind was how (as Livy describes and Machiavelli picks up on) taxes were collected in Republican Rome. I must have known this before but did not realize its full significance and therefore forgot it. The Roman tax collection method was totally anonymous. There was a box set up in the center of town at tax time and it was up to you to put something into it; you had to calculate how much you thought you owed in taxes for that year and duly pay that amount. Nobody checked to see whether you had paid more or less than your fair share. Call it taxes anonymous, or taxanon.

Taxanon is a startlingly brilliant method of collecting taxes that could only happen in a republic. In a tyranny it would not survive, because taxes are extortionate and grossly misused, misappropriated and squandered for frivolities, such as luxuries or arms races. What sensible person would voluntarily support that? But in a climate of virtue and trust between rulers and the ruled, why not? This is the ideal way to collect revenue for the state; though of course it demands of citizens an almost inconceivably strong sense of civic duty.

It certainly must have been cheap.

Think of all the money our modern governments waste on tax regulations, on audits, on punishing tax evaders, on making and plugging loopholes for tax avoiders. Think of the time and money we all waste filling in tax returns, avoiding taxable income, finagling and playing a game that we should not be playing in the first place. It is a joy and privilege to support government, the institution to which we owe our prosperity and our very lives. If we paid the amount that our conscious told us we owed our government, this very voluntary act would amplify many times our sense of dignity and responsibility and, yes, our love for our leaders and what they are doing. Our leaders, at the same time, would not only have to worry about whether they will be voted out, they would also have to justify and explain all of their plans and endeavors, otherwise the taxes that pay for them just might not come in. As it is, we are tax slaves, forced to pay and monitored by an expensive bureaucracy; we are told like children exactly what we should pay and when. Is it any wonder that politicians are more hated with every passing year?

But the most startling fact of all is that taxanon worked. And not only that, it worked not for a year or a decade but for more than five centuries. Nor was this period of Republican Rome a stagnant time, they grew, lived long and prospered. Rome expanded to the point where it dominated most of the known world. Only with the huge influx of wealth that came not from the people but from conquest were the machineries of government corrupted and the sacred trust between people and government broke down, and soon the taxanon system was dumped into the dustbin of history, along with many other great ideas too, no doubt.

But wait a minute, could it be that this idea has been swept out of the garbage, cleaned off, factory rebuilt, and is now being offered to the world by the Lord of Hosts Himself, in the form of the Huqquq? This Baha'i institution is a 19 percent flat-tax paid very much in the taxanon style of republican Rome, and the moneys go towards social programs. Is it too much to expect that as the influence of this way of rendering unto our Creator His God's Rights (that is what Huqquq literally means) grows in influence, that one day most if not all forms of taxation will be paid anonymously?

It shows how ignorant I am of history that Machiavelli noticed what I was wholly unaware of, that taxanon had survived into modern times, though under special conditions. Here is his account, from his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy.

From Machiavelli, Discourses, Book I, Chapter 55

"In Germany alone do we see that probity and religion still exist largely amongst the people, in consequence of which many republics exist there in the full enjoyment of liberty, observing their laws in such manner that no one from within or without could venture upon an attempt to master them."

"And in proof that the ancient virtue still prevails there in great part, I will cite an example similar to that given above of the Senate and people of Rome. When these republics have occasion to spend any considerable amount of money for public account, their magistrates or councils, who have authority in these matters, impose upon all the inhabitants a tax of one or two per cent of their possessions. When such a resolution has been passed according to the laws of the country, every citizen presents himself before the collectors of this impost, and, after having taken an oath to pay the just amount, deposits in a strong-box provided for the purpose the sum which according to his conscience he ought to pay, without any ones witnessing what he pays.

"From this we may judge of the extent of the probity and religion that still exist amongst those people. And we must presume that every one pays the true amount, for if this were not the case the impost would not yield the amount intended according to the estimates based upon former impositions; the fraud would thus be discovered, and other means would be employed to collect the amount required.

"This honesty is the more to be admired as it is so very rare that it is found only in that country; and this results from two causes. The one is, that the Germans have no great commerce with their neighbors, few strangers coming amongst them, and they rarely visiting foreign countries, but being content to remain at home and to live on what their country produces, and to clothe themselves with the wool from their own flocks, which takes away all occasion for intimate intercourse with strangers and all opportunity of corruption.

"Thus they have been prevented from adopting either French, Spanish, or Italian customs, and these nations are the great corrupters of the world. The other cause is, that those republics which have thus preserved their political existence uncorrupted do not permit any of their citizens to be or to live in the manner of gentlemen, but rather maintain amongst them a perfect equality, and are the most decided enemies of the lords and gentlemen that exist in the country; so that, if by chance any of them fall into their hands, they kill them, as being the chief promoters of all corruption and troubles.