I’ve
frequently written on the requirements necessary for a free society.
One of these factors is how our rights are to be protected against the
criminals among us. For most people interested in promoting freedom,
this translates into creating and sustaining a limited,
Jeffersonian-style government, one concerned solely with establishing
(in Jefferson’s words), “...a wise and frugal government which shall
restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them
otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and
improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it
has earned. This is the sum of good government...”
Sounds simple enough. In principle, it is. The devil, of course, is in the details. But...
There
are many in the freedom-movement who reject the very notion of
“government,” limited or otherwise. Are they on to something? Or have
they substituted their (fully justified) disdain and/or hatred for
specific governments that have or do exist for a rational evaluation of
the concept of a limited government?
Given
the burgeoning police state surrounding us that routinely and
unabashedly shreds the last vestiges of what we once termed “liberty,”
arguing about the (sometimes) fine distinctions between “anarchy” (of
the libertarian variety) and “limited government” appears about as
fruitful as disputing the number of angels that can fit on the head of
a pin. Still... If and when the day comes that humanity abandons its
current insane fixation on government as the “savior of mankind,” we
will need to know what target we are aiming for if we are ever to know
when we reach it. Additionally, far too much energy is wasted among
liberty advocates wrangling among ourselves. Better that intellectual
power be focused on educating the public and defeating an overweening
State than in diffusing our own effectiveness. (And I capitalize
“State” not from some misguided desire to grant it respect it ill
deserves but to draw attention to the fact that ninety-plus-percent of
the world’s populace erroneously and disastrously does reify government
into an all-powerful, ever-beneficent entity.)
In “Government and Anarchy” and “Government and Anarchy, Part II,”
I wrote more extensively about the relationship between these two
concepts. In these essays, I pointed out the contradictions inherent in
proposals to achieve a free society via the establishment of anarchy.
Here, I wish to emphasize the central contradiction and address a few
other secondary points. (As an aside, I don’t use the term “minarchy”
for “limited government.” Beyond being a contrived and inelegant term,
it obscures the true nature of what I am advocating.)
The
main contradiction in libertarian anarchy is that its foundational
ideas are based on a circular argument (assuming as a premise what is
supposed to be proven as a conclusion). The arguments for this style of
anarchy rely on a variant of what Ayn Rand termed “the stolen concept
fallacy,” that is, they use “concepts while denying the roots and the
existence of the concepts they are using.” (Rand, For the New Intellectual, p. 154)
This fundamental and inescapable, inherent error is hinted at by a
variant label for libertarian anarchism, that is, “anarcho-capitalism.”
Anarchists tell us that a free society can be achieved by “economic
competition” among privately owned and run “defense agencies.” Indeed,
they tell us that any and every individual in a society has the right
to set up a defense agency, accept clients/customers, and compete with
any and all other defense agencies for business. Eventually, the
freedom-oriented defense agencies will “out compete” the other, less
productive and efficient non-freedom-oriented defense agencies and
force the latter to “go out of business.” The end result will be a free
society devoid of government.
** The irrefutable inner contradiction of anarchy is this: one cannot engage in free-market competition in a non-free society. **
Anarchists assume
a free society in which free-market competition exists (a begging the
question/circular argument fallacy that sets the stage for anarchists’
diversionary discussions about how “private defense agencies” would
operate in a free-market) then claim that they can create
a free society via anarcho-capitalism (a stolen concept fallacy as
anarchists immediately forget that they just assumed as already
existing what they now claim their anarchy will produce). This second
contradiction reverses cause-and-effect. One must first have in place the requirements for a free society before one can engage in free-market competition. Whatever private defense agencies would be practicing in a non-free-market, it would most assuredly not be “free-market competition.”
One can, of course, establish an economic market
without a free-society (as all hobbled markets in history demonstrate).
A group of people could even do so in the absence of any formal
government. But without mechanisms in place to protect property and
other human rights throughout a given society (“jurisdiction”) and the ability to coercively enforce those protections even against those who reject the authority of the enforcers in that territory, there cannot and never will be a truly free society.
In a free-market, I can always exercise my freedom and refuse to deal with or boycott any particular business. But there is no “freedom” to refuse the enforcement of rights. (See my essay “‘Imposing’ Freedom”
for a more detailed discussion of this point.) This clearly refutes a
basic tenet of anarchy: that a “defense agency” is no different than
any other business in a free society.
Nor
will it suffice for anarchists to point to the millennia long stretch
of non-free States and then claim that this “proves” the impossibility
of having a freedom-supporting, limited government. One could as easily
state that there has never been a free society, therefore it is not
possible to have a free society. (These are examples of the “appeal to
tradition” fallacy.)
Many anarchists beg another question by stating that any and all governments are inherently rights-violating because they are based on “coercion” or “violence.” But coercion or violence are not always illegitimate.
This is easily seen in the realm of personal self-defense, a cause
virtually all freedom-lovers support. If violence/coercion are moral
for an individual, then if exercised properly, they are moral for the delegates of an individual to use in his defense (whether via a government or a private defense agency).
Nor is voting inherently “coercive.” If the only purpose of voting were to elect those who would safeguard our rights
(see Jefferson’s quote above), then no violation of rights would occur.
(After all, even with private defense agencies, the
shareholders/clients/customers could, for example, vote for the members of the board of directors.)
Neither will pointing out the historical omnipresence of taxation establish the illegitimacy of “government.” No anarchist has or can prove that taxation (legalized theft) is a necessity for financing a government, that is, a government can exist if and only if
it imposes taxation. While the exact nature of how voluntary financing
of government might work is unknown at present, the same can be said of
any
future development, whether in technology or medicine or business (or
defense agencies). Reasonable options for such non-coercive financing
of government have already been offered by Rand and others; enough,
anyway, to indicate general avenues for approaching the problem (should
that blessed day ever materialize...).
(While it is true that voluntary financing of the present State would not be possible, we should not forget that a limited
government would be 5-10% the size of the behemoth currently smothering
us. Given the most recently proposed federal budget [$3+ trillion],
that would be in the neighborhood of $300,000,000,000 [$300 billion] or
just over $1000 per person per year [assuming
the higher 10% level of funding and 300 million citizens]. Even adding
in state and local governments would not appreciably alter that figure.
An average of one thousand — or even two thousand — dollars per person
per year to fund our defense hardly veers into fantasyland. Most people
already spend more than that each year to ensure [and to insure] the
protection of their homes, cars, and health. The actual costs would
most probably be lower than this average.)
Even
in a free society with a limited government there could, of course, be
any number of “private defense agencies” protecting individuals in any
given community. Such agencies exist now, even in our presently
non-free society. Anarchists commit a “false alternative fallacy” if
and when they posit either a society with a government or
a society with private defense agencies protecting citizens’ rights.
Perhaps the blinders preventing anarchists from recognizing the
contradictions in their own philosophy arises from their false
definition of “government.”
Rand defined “government” as “an institution that holds the exclusive power to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a given geographical area.” (The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 107). A “proper government” is assigned “the task of protecting...rights under an objective code of rules,” that is, “placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control — i.e., under objectively defined rules.” (VOS, p. 109) (Italics in original.)
In
a free society, this would mean that “government” is that set of bodies
and agencies that is empowered by citizens of a particular territory to
enforce (via direct or indirect coercion) throughout that jurisdiction
that exclusive set of objective principles (and objectively-defined implementing laws) that protect individual rights.
In their understandable and proper desire to establish “competition” among different levels of government (i.e., via a “separation
of powers” and a system of “checks and balances”), even the Founders
stumbled in recognizing the “right” of individual states to establish
rights-violating laws in contravention to those of the federal
government (for example, state-based anti-self-defense laws designed to
restrict the rights of blacks and other minorities in obtaining
weapons).
Objectively defined morality, objectively defined rights, objectively defined freedom are not subject to “competition.”
There
can be only a single set of fundamental principles underlying liberty.
Reality does not permit contradictions and thus will not permit freedom
founded on both X and not-X. The singularly most important task of
humanity is to discover and implement that one and only one set of moral and legal principles that recognizes and defends our rights as individuals.
Whether
it is a single person defending his life, his family, his property from
a robber in the dead of the night; a city government protecting the
rights of its citizens from having their property stolen by fraudulent
organizations; a state resisting demands to restrict its citizens’
right to free association; or a national government rejecting a call
from a foreign nation to surrender even a square inch of its citizens’
homes to its control; every person and every institution in a free society must have his or its coercive actions subject to objective, external examination and validation by neutral third-parties.
Can
this legal process be mistaken? Of course. Can this process lead to bad
results? Most assuredly. But the fallibility and non-omniscience of a
government does not prove its impossibility as a valid institution. No
person — and no organization, including a “private defense agency” — is
infallible or omniscient.
So
who is to decide whether principles X or principles Y are the correct
ones on which to base a free society? As Rand might say, no person decides. People identify or judge that X or Y or Z is the right set of principles to follow. But it is reality that “decides” if that identification corresponds to the truth.
Only
in a free society can there be free competition. Only a single set of
principles can underlie a free society. Only a single set of
institutions operating according to that single set of principles can
protect individual rights with a single set of objective laws.
There is, indeed, a monopoly involved in a free society protected by a limited government. But that monopoly exists as a monopoly on the principles and laws necessary for liberty,
not in the form of any particular subset of “government.” (After all,
no advocate of limited government foolishly believes that “government”
exists solely and singly of the “federal government.” Not only is the
federal government itself not monolithic in organization, there are
city, county, and state governments and all the various components and
permutations of that “institution” that is the “government” Rand and I
and others support and defend. Indeed, there can be any number of
private defense agencies operating and vying for customers as long as the actions of those private defense agencies are subject to the same monopoly of principles and laws that limit governmental agencies.)
To recap:
1. One cannot have “free-market competition” in the absence of a free market.
2. One cannot have a “free market” in the absence of a free society.
3. One cannot have a “free society” in the absence of a mechanism to defend rights throughout that society.
4. One cannot have “free-market competition” when a business’s customers cannot refuse to deal with that business.
5. One cannot have the “freedom” to refuse a “free society.”
6.
One cannot have more than one set of basic principles and laws in a
free society; there must be a “monopoly of liberty” or liberty does not
exist.
7. One cannot exempt oneself from the objective examination by neutral third parties/arbiters of one’s coercive acts.
One
can label this monopoly of principles and laws “government” or a
“supra-defense agency” or whatever one likes. But there must be a single
set of objective principles and laws (and organizations to implement
that monopoly) that guide or control or govern — take your pick — the
individuals in any given jurisdiction (including the individuals
working for “government” or “defense agencies”). If freedom is one’s
goal, there is no viable alternative.
Libertarian
anarchists (or anarcho-capitalists) should recognize that their vision
for establishing a free society is impossible, riddled as it is with
contradictions and fallacies. No anarchist can refute the arguments
advanced in either this or my earlier essays on this topic because one
cannot refute reality.
All one can do is evade reality. At that, anarchists should not try to succeed.
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