Moving along the State-Anarchy Continuum

Consider the characteristic Hobbesian argument for the state: we need Leviathan to ensure, through the use or threat of force, that conflicts are resolved peacefully. (I do not say “justly”—there is no structural way to ensure that the outcomes of any state-based judicial system [or any comparable system in a stateless society] will be procedurally or substantively just, though of course some structures will be more conducive to just procedures and outcomes than others.)

I. It is important to note how little this argument even seeks, on its own terms, to demonstrate: if it succeeds, it shows the need, at most, for a “night-watchman” or “night-guard” state.

II. It has limited implications for the size of the state. Again, assuming the argument were correct, there would obviously be some such limitations: the population governed by Leviathan would have to be sufficiently large that

1. the people with whom one were most likely to have disputes would also fall within Leviathan’s jurisdiction
2. relevant economies of scale could come into play
3. Leviathan was sufficiently well funded to enable it to repel invasions by other states

III. This means, then, that nothing about Hobbes’s argument, per se, requires a world of c. 200 states, by his lights states that would need to be only night-guard states. A world made up of 100,000 micro-night-guard states (MNGSs—perhaps more limited equivalents of the basic social units in Murray Bookchin's libertarian municipalism)—the typical one perhaps comprising a small city and its suburbs—would seem to be one in which Hobbes’s stipulations were fulfilled: each of these micro-states could effectively perform the tasks for which Leviathan is, per Hobbes’s argument, purportedly needed. (If some of these micro-states were markedly bigger than others, of course, there would be risks of invasion and conquest. But that does nothing to show that micro-states couldn’perform the basic Hobbesian function of preserving internal peace.)

IV. Nothing about the basic functions of Leviathan precludes free departure from any of these MNGSs (presuming agreements across borders ensure that courts’ judgments could still be enforced against people who fleeing to avoid the enforcement of such judgments).

V. There would be no Hobbesian reason for general limitations on anyone's entry into any of these MNGSs, with the exception of someone with a history of violence that suggested that the MNGS would have more trouble keeping the peace were she to enter (and, even here, entry need not be precluded for a potentially violent person willing to post an appropriate bond).

VI. There would, again, be no strong Hobbesian reason for any MNGS to compel payment for its services by any resident. It could simply decline to provide direct protection via its police and judicial services for anyone who declined to contribute appropriately to support for these services. Of course, some people would reap positive externalities in this case, but it seems unlikely that most would because most would want personal access to police and judicial services.

VII. Finally, it is not clear that there would be a strong Hobbesian reason for an MNGS to be geographically localized: an MNGS could be a social network that provided police and judicial service to its members, who might be as geographically separated as proved economically efficient. It doesn’t seem as if having a territory is necessary for an MNGS to keep the peace: what matters is that it be clear which MNGS is responsible for resolving a particular dispute, something that can clearly be determined by the right sorts of agreements.

VIII. So we can imagine what seems to be a smooth conceptual transition from (1) the kind of large-scale state Hobbes himself doubtless had in mind to (2) an MNGS featuring unfettered emigration and largely unfettered immgration to (3) such an MNGS without compulsory funding to (4) such an MNGS without territory.

IX. It seems, then, that endorsing the Hobbesian argument for the state is consistent with endorsing market anarchy. Or, put another way, a voluntary protective agency could qualify as a Hobbesian Leviathan.

X. Clearly, this isn’t a conclusion the Hobbesian is likely to want to endorse. At what point along the continuum do you think she is likely to maintain that the MNGS would no longer be able to do the work Leviathan is supposed to do? And how would you respond?

Socialism revisited

I'd like to try to tie together and expand my observations re. the great “socialist”/“capitalist” terminological debate that’s been proceeding at C4SS and AAE.

“Socialism” as Genus; “State-Socialism” as Species

I think there is good reason to use “socialism” to mean something like opposition to:

1. bossism (that is to subordinative workplace hierarchy); and
   
2. deprivation (that is, persistent, exclusionary poverty, whether resulting from state-capitalist depredation, private theft, disaster, accident, or other factors.
   

“Socialism” in this sense is the genus; “state-socialism” is the (much-to-be-lamented) species.

Indeed, using the “socialist” label provides the occasion for a clear distinction between the genus “socialism” and the species “state-socialism.” Thus, it offers a convenient opportunity to expose and critique the statist assumptions many people reflexively make (assumptions that make it all-too-easy for political theory to take as given the presupposition that its subject matter is the question, ‘What should the state do?’).

I am more sympathetic than perhaps I seem to the claims of those who object to linguistic arguments that they fear may have no real impact on anyone’s political judgment. I wouldn’t dismiss as silly someone who said that no market anarchist could employ “socialist” without creating inescapable confusion.

“Capitalism”: Seemingly in the Same Boat

So the first thing to say, I think, is that the same is true of “capitalism.” It’s a word with a history, and the history is, very often, rather less than pretty.

Consider people on the streets of a city in Latin America, or Africa, or Asia, or Europe, chanting their opposition to neoliberalism and, yes, capitalism. I find it difficult to imagine that hordes of protestors would turn out in the streets to assail po’-lil’-ol’ private ownership. When a great many people say that “capitalism,” is the enemy, that’s surely because, among many people around the world, “capitalism” has come to mean something like “social dominance by the owners of capital,” a state of affairs many people might find unappealing.

In accordance with the kind of libertarian class analysis it’s easy to find in the work of people like Murray Rothbard, John Hagel, Butler Shaffer, and Roderick Long, Kevin Carson—author of the original C4SS article and Stephan Kinsella’s target (to Kinsella’s credit, he is not only blunt but also good-natured)—maintains that this social dominance is dependent on the activity of the state. Remove the props provided by the state, he argues, and “capitalism” in this sense—the sense in which the term is employed pejoratively by millions of people who have no ideological investment in statism or bureaucratic tyranny—is finished.

Socialist Ends, Market Means

That doesn’t mean that the market anarchist must somehow have forgotten her commitment to markets. As Kevin, Brad, Charles, and others have observed, as a historical matter there clearly have been people who have argued for the abolition of state-supported privilege and who have enthusiastically favored freed markets who have worn the label “socialist” confidently. Tucker and Hodgskin wouldn’t have agreed that socialism is synonymous with collective ownership. Rather, they would have said, various schemes for state ownership (or for collective ownership by some quasi-state entity) are ways of achieving the underlying goal of socialism—an end to bossism in the workplace, the dominance of the owners of capital in society, and to significant, widespread deprivation. But, Tucker and Hodgskin would have said, these are both unjust and ineffective means of achieving this goal—better to pursue it by freeing the market than by enhancing the power of the state.

Of course, if “socialism” means “state [or para-state] ownership of the means of production,” there is no sense in characterizing Carson or any other market anarchist as defending “clearly pro-socialist positions.” On the other hand, if “socialism” can have a sufficiently broad meaning—one compatible with market anarchism—that it makes sense to say that Kevin (or another market anarchist) does defend such positions, then it is unclear why talk of “socialism” should be objectionable.

Distinguishing Market-Oriented Socialists from State-Socialists

Carson, for one, clearly supports the existence of private ownership rights. And I have seen nothing to suggest that he would disagree with the claim that market interactions have to feature non-state ownership if they are to be voluntary. He’s consistently clear that there could, would, should be alternate kinds of property regimes in a stateless society, but none of those he considers appropriate would be rooted in coercion. So I’m puzzled by the implication that he’s an opponent of private ownership.

None of that means that one can’t point to despicable regimes (Pol Pot, anyone?) who’ve worn the “socialist” label proudly. But surely if the idea is to point to despicable applications of a term, one can do the same with “capitalism” as with “socialism”? (Think Pinochet-era Chile.) The association of “capitalism” with mercantilism and corporatism and the dominance of entrenched elites is hardly a creation of left libertarians and other market anarchists: it’s an association that’s common in the minds of many people around the world and which is thoroughly warranted by the behavior of states and of many businesses and socially powerful individuals.

Beyond Semantics

So, in short, I’m not sure that using “socialism” as the label for a particular sort of market anarchist project, or of “capitalism” for what that project opposes, has to be seen as just an exercise in semantic game-playing.

1. Emancipatory intent. For instance: labeling a particular sort of market anarchist project “socialist” clearly identifies its emancipatory intent: it links that project with the opposition to bossism and deprivation that provide the real moral and emotional force of socialist appeals of all sorts.

2. Warranted opposition to “capitalism.” Thus, identifying one’s project as “socialist” is a way of making clear one’s opposition to “capitalism”—as that term is understood by an enormous range of ordinary people around the world. The “socialist” label signals to them that a market anarchist project like Kevin’s is on their side and that it is opposed to those entities they identify as their oppressors.

3. Forcing the state-socialist to distinguish between her attachment to ends and her attachment to means. A final rationale: suppose a market anarchist like Kevin points out to the state-socialist—by sincerely owning the “socialist” label—that she or he shares the state-socialist’s ends, while disagreeing radically with the state-socialist’s judgments about appropriate means to those ends. This simultaneously sincere and rhetorically effective move allows the market anarchist to challenge the state-socialist to confront the reality that there is an inconsistency between the state-socialist’s emancipatory goals and the authoritarian means she or he professes to prefer. It sets the stage for the market anarchist to highlight the fact that purported statist responses to bossism create more, and more powerful, bosses, that the state is much better at causing deprivation than curing it.

Thus, the market anarchist’s use of “socialism” creates an occasion for the state-socialist to ask her- or himself, perhaps for the first time, “Am I really more attached to the means or to the end?” I realize that what I intend as a rhetorical question may not—if the state-socialist cares more about power than principle—elicit the intended answer. But it seems to me that, for many state-socialists, the recognition that the left-wing market anarchist sought socialist goals by non-statist means provides the state-socialist with good reason to rethink her attachment to the state, to conclude that it was pragmatic and unnecessary, and that her genuinely principled attachment was to the cause of human emancipation.

This means there’s a meaningful opportunity for education—to highlight the existence of a credible tradition advancing a different meaning of “socialism.”

Libertarianism and the Socialist Vision

Now, it is obviously open to a critic to maintain that she has no particular concern with workplace hierarchies or with deprivation, or that they should be of no concern to the libertarian-qua-libertarian, since objections to them do not flow from libertarian principles.

I am happy to identify as an anarchist who favors markets and property rights (though my Aristotelianism and Thomism disincline me to characterize them in the same way as Stephan), as well as individual autonomy. But I do not ask myself whether my appreciation for “socialism” in this sense is something to which I am committed qua libertarian. Rather, my willingness to identify as a libertarian is licensed by a more fundamental set of moral judgments which also make “socialism” in the relevant sense attractive, and which help to ensure that the senses in which I am a libertarian and in which I am a socialist consistent.

At minimum, there seems to be some reason for using the label “capitalism”, so clearly understood to be the alter of “socialism,” for the kind of economic system we have now, backed up so clearly by state-granted and state-maintained privilege. But I think it’s worth emphasizing that “capitalism”—both because of its history and because of its superficial content—seems to suggest more than merely state-supported privilege (though surely it implies at least this): it seems to suggest “social dominance by the owners of capital (understood to be other than the owners of labor).”

Now, it happens to be the case that I agree with Kevin, Roderick, and others that this dominance is dependent in large measure on state abuses. But I don’t want simply to emphasize my objection to these abuses—though I certainly do—but also to express my opposition, per se, to the dominance of the owners of capital, thus understood. That’s why I am disinclined to regard talk of “socialism” as important, as highlighting, at minimum, the trajectory toward which the market anarchist project be thought to lead, and as identifying morally important values to which my sort of market anarchist, at least, is committed, and which do not seem to me like good candidates for the status of “particular interests,” if these are understood as arbitrary, even if morally licit.

I am avowedly opposed to the institutionalized use of force against persons, and against their (Aristotelian-Thomist) ownership rights, and I am quite willing to say so loudly or clearly. That makes me, by my own lights, a libertarian. But I am not prepared to dismiss my invocation of “socialism” as a label that has not lost its usefulness for the left-libertarian project, as simply an expression of individual preference with which no good libertarian ought to interfere, simply because interference would be unreasonably aggressive. Rather, “socialism” names a set of concerns, including ones regarding attractive patterns of social organization, that there is good reason for left-libertarians whole-heartedly to endorse.

Gabb on Carson

Sean Gabb offers a very thoughtful review of Kevin Carson's Organization Theory on the Libertarian Alliance blog. I am inclined to disagree with Gabb about copyright and “vulgar libertarianism” alike, and a number of those posting to the comments section seem overly confident that transportation subsidies don't really distort patterns of commercial activity or promote otherwise inefficient organizational sizes. But whatever disagreements I might have with Gabb (and especially with a number of his readers, for whose views he obviously isn’t responsible), this is a great review.

What makes it so powerful is its capacity to convey a sense of just how eye-opening Carson's work really is. Gabb has surely read more social, political, and organizational theory than most people, and yet it's clear that engaging with Carson led to a genuine “aha!” moment for him, as it did for me. I encourage readers of this blog to devour, digest, repost, and respond to Gabb's review (both at his own site and on LiberaLaw).

An Issue about Legal Enforcement

Suppose non-human animals have moral standing.

This is obviously a controversial supposition. My point here is not to debate it, but to treat it as a given, arguendo. If you want to debate it, I'm glad to do so at another time and in another post.

My question—and it is genuinely a question—is: how might this moral standing be reflected in the legal order of a stateless society?

At present, the state plays the role of half-hearted trustee on behalf of some non-human animals. Obviously, its doing so involves the same sorts of risks that are involved in any purportedly protective action by the state.

In a stateless society, it is often, and plausibly, suggested, property rights might well help to ensure the preservation of natural treasures like the Grand Canyon. And, even in an anarchist community with markets, these property rights could perfectly well be common. Similarly, more narrowly “environmental” concerns—effectively, battery and trespass concerns—could be aptly addressed by means of tort law.

But a crucial component of regarding non-human animals as having moral standing is denying that they are anyone's property. Clearly, though, they are most unlikely to be able to vindicate their own claims in any legal system, which means that others will need to act on their behalf. But those owners cannot, ex hypothesi, be their owners. Who might they be?

It is easy enough to imagine particular people being acknowledged in a given community as the trustees of non-human animals in that community, able to act on their behalf. But it is also, unfortunately, easy to imagine problems unavoidably associated with this sort of arrangement.

The trustees' interests would not be automatically aligned with those of the non-human animals they were expected to serve. They might easily opt to use their roles as putative protectors of the animals to advance their own.

What sorts of constraints might be built into the trustee model? What alternative models might be available? Your insights are welcome.

An Outline of a Tentative, Contingent Case against the State

I dislike the state. I would much prefer doing without the violence and oppression being ruled by the state seems to involve. But it's worth asking whether this is more than a preference on my part (“Some people like chocolate, others support anarchism”).

Some kinds of moral stances—for instance, those that support unqualified (Lockean? Rothbardian?) property rights—can readily dismiss all taxation as theft and thus all states as robbers. I don’t dislike this conclusion; indeed, it warms my heart whenever I’m reminded that it invalidates the kind of petty local tyranny expressed in zoning laws and eminent domain action. But my political morality is rooted in the thought of Aristotle, Aquinas, and their modern interpreters (who have tended to offer pragmatic arguments for state authority), and that means that my account of rights and duties is somewhat more complicated. That means that I can still offer a credible case against the legitimacy of state authority; but it will be qualified, tentative, and contingent on at least some empirical claims that might be contestable.

I’d like to outline the multi-part case I’m inclined to offer against state authority and benefit from the responses of my readers. It would be good to hear from both Rothbardians and others who think it is obvious that the state is always and everywhere illegitimate (and who will therefore think I have been insufficiently radical) and from minarchists and other statists (who will doubtless think I have been excessively so).

I brief: I think anarchism is defensible on at least the following tentative but substantial grounds:

1. The Absence of Justification for the State. There is no natural right to rule. The authority of the state seems arbitrary and indefensible. The state lacks legitimacy, but it may often be argued that, pragmatically, the state still does something useful. However, there are both negative and positive reasons to regard this as unpersuasive.
2. Unjust and Destructive State Behavior. The state tends to be destructive. It engages in war and plunder, it oppresses, it excludes, and it subordinates.
3. Undesirable Consequences of State Behavior. The state tends to promote inefficiencies through subsidies, monopolies, patents, tariffs, and other mechanisms that allow corporations to escape the cost principle. It also burdens people frustratingly.
4. Positive Consequences of Anarchy. An anarchical society will foster efficiency and productivity.
5. The Possible Effectiveness of Anarchical Social Institutions. (i) An anarchical society can provide the coordination needed to ensure social order. (ii) Anarchical social institutions can provide the services the state provides efficiently.
6. The Capacity of Anarchical Social Institutions to Foster Creativity. An anarchical society can make possible a range of social and cultural experiments, the exploration of a range of possibilities, experiments in living.

What’s wrong with this list? In what ways is it too short, in what ways too extensive? I look forward to hearing from you.

Kinsella on Hoppe on Immigration

Some lively conversation has already erupted at the Center for a Stateless Society over Kevin Carson's new commentary, “Authoritarians in Libertarian Clothing.” Carson expresses his puzzlement at the support many putative libertarians seem inclined to offer to hierarchical social arrangements in the workplace, the family, etc.

Offering a characteristically clear and pugnacious response, Stephan Kinsella begs to demur. For whatever reason, WordPress hasn't made it possible for me to contribute to the thread of comments on Carson’s post, so I’ve decided to take the opportunity to react to one aspect of Kinsella's argument here.

Carson notes “the argument, by Hans Hermann Hoppe and his followers, that immigration would be restricted in a free market anarchy by the universal appropriation of land,” and points out some objections to it. Kinsella responds:

As for Hoppe–well, although he’s actually against state immigration restrictions as an anarchist, at worst, his second-best approach is to have some restrictions on immigration given that the existence of the state means that someone will lose, whether the state enforces some, or no, immigration rules. Yet, most libertarians support some immigration restrictions, if only the type that says keep out criminals or people who don’t have means of support. I guess most libertarians are “authoritarian.

It would be helpful for me if Kinsella could clarify for me a little what he means by a “second-best approach” with respect to immigration restrictions. It sounds to me as if he’s saying something like this: “There happens, in fact, to be a state; right now, we can’t do much about that. Whatever the state chooses to do with respect to immigration, someone’s position will be worsened. So some restrictions are justified and, indeed, preferable to the absence of restrictions.”

I guess I’m not sure how the fact (let’s accept it as such arguendo) that someone will be worse off no matter what the state does with respect to immigration would necessarily make imposing immigration restrictions appropriate from the standpoint of a Rothbardian or someone of similar moral-cum-political persuasion. Ignore for the moment the obvious interference with prima facie reasonable contractual relationships between workers and employers caused by restrictions on the ability to work without Social Security registration; focus instead on borders. The land adjacent to a border is either privately owned, owned by no one, or claimed by the state. If it’s privately owned or owned by no one, it’s not clear on what basis someone holding a Rothbardian or similar position could regard it as morally acceptable for the state to assert the right to prevent people from entering it from another country. And if the land is claimed by the state, the claim would seem in principle to be invalid, given the general moral invalidity of state claims to authority, as well as the fact that state claims are likely to be further invalidated in virtue of their roots in violence and conquest.

It’s unclear, then, that a person proposing to enter a state’s (putative) territory would have any moral reason to care whether the state sought to restrict entry to the territory or not. In turn, then, it’s not clear on what basis, from a perspective like Hoppe’s, an agent of the state could be morally justified in repelling people seeking to enter the territory without the state’s permission, since the state has no right to control “its” own property and certainly no authority over private property.

There is, in any event, something a little curious about the language of “second-best” from someone like Hoppe. It seems as if there’s no difference in principle (but only as a matter of degree) between saying that enforcing immigration restrictions is a second-best policy, given the existence of the state, to say that, given the existence of the state, taxes ought to be collected to pay for it or that, given the existence of the state, an enormous military force is needed to protect its interests, etc. Why couldn’t “second-best” arguments of the kind you impute to Hoppe be offered on behalf of these things, too? And, if they can, doesn’t that constitute a reductio ad absurdum of the claim that this is in any interesting sense an anarcho-capitalist argument?

A Pilgrim’s Progress

Carl Oglesby's Ravens in the Storm is a very fine book. It is gracefully written, crafted by someone who loves words. It is narratively engaging, drawing the reader into Oglesby's personal and political experiences and depicting the development of a human person and the rise and decline of a movement in a way that never loses the reader's attention. It is reflective and self-critical, repeatedly underscoring Oglesby's awareness of his own limits and mistakes. And it is, in general, politically astute, offering insightful strategic, tactical, and normative assessments of political moves made by a wide variety of actors.

Oglesby served as president of Students for a Democratic Society during SDS's 1965-66 presidential term. As a leader of SDS, he occupied a front-row seat during a momentous period in US and world history. In Ravens in the Storm, he chronicles his evolution from relatively uncritical supporter of the status quo—he worked for several years as a secret-cleared employee of defense contractor Bendix—to vocal critic. He describes his interactions with a range of interesting and historically significant figures, and he offers a set of observations about war, politics, and protest.

For those aware of what is to come in Oglesby's own story, and, indeed, in more recent American history, the most interesting single relationship described in the book may be the one between Oglesby and Bernadine Dohrn (Oglesby remains somewhat coy about its precise contours). Evidently fond and respectful of each other, Oglesby and Dohrn joust throughout the book over a range of questions: Should SDS understand itself as a Marxist organization? What should be the place of armed struggle in the process of political change in the United States? Is there any value to dialogue between those seeking social change and those with power?

Oglesby does not seem to have had a close or warm relationship with Tom Hayden, but there is an obvious overlap in tone and emphasis between Ravens in the Storm and Hayden's 1988 memoir, Reunion. For both, the call to move toward a radically decentralized and participatory society is a call to recapture something that is essentially American. The goals of the New Left are, on this view, continuous (even if not necessarily identical) with the aspirations implicit in the American political project at its best. To take the kind of view expressed by Oglesby (and Hayden) is unavoidably to be, if not a thoroughgoing optimist, then at least not someone who has abandoned all hope in American society. It is therefore not to side with those, like the Dohrn of the late ’60s (as depicted, at least, by Oglesby) and the Weathermen, for whom desperate violence seems like the only way of undermining a corrupt system.

By contrast, Oglesby presents himself—now and during the heyday of SDS—as a representative of the “radical center,” as someone for whom identification with either wing of the American Establishment is unappealing, but who also clearly believes that people outside the mainstream on both the right and the left can find more common ground than they might imagine. For him, as for most of the early SDS leaders, orthodox Marxism sought just the kind of centralized, state control the New Left opposed. Oglesby could enthusiastically press for an SDS contribution to the harvesting of sugar cane in Cuba as an act of solidarity with the Cuban people and as a protest against the US boycott—but not as any kind of endorsement of the Castro regime or its ideology. Poverty, racism, imperialism, militarism, corporate dominance, and (latterly) sexism—these things Oglesby clearly opposed and opposes, but from a perspective allowing him to identify as a libertarian, and to be praised as one by Murray Rothbard. That Rothbard, who famously washed his hands of the New Left after his brief alliance with it against the Vietnam war and the corporate state, could affirm one of its earliest vocal members, one who had not changed his political views in any significant degree, as a libertarian speaks both to Oglesby’s capacity for political insight and coalition-building and to the capaciousness of libertarianism properly understood.

Similarly, Oglesby stresses the fact that doctrinaire pacifism played no role in shaping his opposition to the Vietnam war. That opposition was clearly principled: the initiation of the war was morally unjustified, the way in which it was conducted violated just war norms, and it gave every evidence of proving strategically ineffective and, indeed, counterproductive. But these were judgments made about a specific war in a specific time and place; Oglesby clearly reserved the right to judge each argument for war on its own merits.

Identifying proudly as an American, locating himself in the radical middle, Oglesby seeks to maintain ties with family members in the South for whom his anti-war stance seems anything but patriotic. Among the book's most poignant passages are his descriptions of encounters with his father, persistently skeptical of his son's activism, and the Baptist preacher who, though Carl's favorite uncle in childhood, now denounces his nephew as bound for hell.

American antiwar activism is still very much alive. Even the SDS has been reborn. But some things obviously differentiate today's antiwar movement from the one in which Oglesby played such a crucial role as a young man. The confluence among antiward activism, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, the burgeoning women's movement, the movement for sexual liberation and the freedom of sexual minorities, the rise of rock ’n’ roll, the emergence of alternative spiritualities, and the beatnik-cum-hippie culture created a range of powerful synergies. It really seemed in the ’60s as if there were in some sense a (fractiously) unified movement for the liberatory transformation of American society, with each componenet at least sometimes drawing strength from the others. Today, American culture has absorbed some, if by no means all, of the lessons of the ’60s, and seems to be in no mood for the kind of potentially cataclysmic upheaval in which Oglesby participated. Antiwar activists, like other campaigners for social change, can’t draw as they could in the ’60s on the font of energy provided by a movement-for-change-in-general.

If the absence of a ’60s-style cross-issue movement and the demonization of the ’60s by some conservative pundits can plausibly be seen as cause for regret, the lack of enthusiasm for revolutionary violence among antiwar activists—the absence from the scene of “violent doves”—is one thing that surely makes today’s antiwar movement healthier than its predecessor. Also worth celebrating is the rise among antiwar activists of just the sort of coalition against unjust warfare Oglesby favored, a coalition embracing principled people from across the political spectrum—represented most obviously by AntiWar.Com. Oglesby’s own simultaneous embrace of the left’s ideals and of a libertarian opposition to centralized power and state socialism ought to be inspiring to many members of that coalition. But even those who are unenthusiastic about Oglesby’s own distinctive political synthesis (or who believe, like Ron Jacobs, that he overemphasizes the significance of personality and underestimates “the role of history” in understanding the events he describes—since I’m doubtful that history does anything, I tend to side with Oglesby) should find the story he tells compelling. Ravens in the Storm recreates an era marked by idealism, hope, and the potential for radical change while offering sobering observations about the limits of fanaticism and instructive insights into coalition-building. It focuses on the all-too-human (and still active) Oglesby rather than offering grand historical generalization; but it has a great deal to teach today’s activists. It is also—and surely this is what’s most important—a great read.

Anarchy and Poverty

What would be the impact of eliminating the state on poverty? What remedial processes, activities, or institutions designed to respond to the problem of poverty would be appropriate in a stateless society?

One way to begin getting at this is to ask how readers of this blog assess the impact of various factors in contributing to the incidence of poverty. (I have no burden to force a definition of this term on anyone. If you post, though, it might help to clarify what you mean by poverty.)

I can imagine a credible account of the dynamics underlying poverty incorporating some reference to each of the following factors:

1. Natural disaster.
2. Sincere, responsible choices marked by bad judgment.
3. Irresponsible personal choices.
4. Mental illness or serious personal pathology.
   
5. Genuinely unpredictable individual market outcomes.
6. Systemic consequences of market outcomes.
   
7. Legal rules of various kinds which are clearly intended by those who institute them to funnel resources into the pockets of elites.
8. Legal rules of various kinds which are sincerely intended to serve neutral social ends, or even to benefit poor people, but which in fact increase or perpetuate poverty.
9. Redistribution to elites through the tax system (likely via subsidies)
   
10. Collateral damage in the course of war.
11. Acts of targeted violence (as in war).
12. Theft of personal property
    
13. Acts of legally sanctioned or tolerated dispossession.
14. Acts of dispossession not, in fact, remedied by legal institutions but not sanctioned or tolerated by them
15. Enslavement
    
16. Prejudice and discrimination of various kinds.
    

By listing these possibilites, I don't intend to pass judgment on whether any of them even occurs, much less how frequent it is. I just want to highlight how many different factors might be thought to be in play as a way of sparking discussion (you may think of others).

Some of the best recent market anarchist work—e.g., that of Charles Johnson—has powerfully emphasized the role of the state in creating and perpetuating poverty (cp. factors 7 and 8 above). A market anarchist could also argue that factors 12 and 13 has played a key role in creating poverty (cp. Kevin Carson’s discussion of primitive accumulation). Absent state power to back up illegitimate claims, unjust dispossessions might be remedied in various ways. I have no burden to argue with Charles or Kevin that the state plays a significant role in impoverishing people. I just wonder (and this isn't a rhetorical wondering) how significant other factors are.

Absent subsidies to and protections of discriminators, a market anarchist might say, prejudice and discrimination (factor 16) might well be minized; and, of course, the private courts of some communities in a market anarchist society might award tort damages for employment discrimination (how these would be enforceable in such communities is a question that, per my earlier exchanges here with quasibill, I deliberately leave to one side). The absence of the state might make prejudice-based poverty less likely, and needn’t, in any case, increase it.

Further, the market anarchist could argue, factor 9 would not arise in a stateless society; and factors 10 and 11 would be less problematic, both because there would be fewer wars in the absence of states with tax-funded military machines and because insurance compensation for various kinds of harm from protection agency forces might be more readily obtainable than compensation from state military forces is at present.

Theft and enslavement (factors and 12, 13, 14, and 15) might well be effectively remedied by various non-state mechanisms, and neither poses any difficulty for the anarchist that is in principle insuperable.

The interesting questions, I think, concern factors 1 through 6. How significant are they in comparison with other factors in accounting for the existence of poverty? How significant would they be in a stateless society? Are they insigifnicant enough that removing the state would eliminate most causes of poverty, making it possible for something recognizably like today's private charities or the equivalent to address problems at the margins? Or are any of these factors likely to be sources of severe and persistent deprivation even without the state?

How relevant are the various factors I've listed? Are there others that should have been included? Which would still be significant absent the state? What remedial mechanisms for those that would would be most effective and appropriate in a stateless society? I'd like very much to hear your analyses.

Were the Nazis Really Privatization Enthusiasts?

More from me on anarchy and law still to come. Meanwhile, check out Kevin Carson’s observations re. the Nazis and privatization.

Stimuli

You know the drill: if there’s a new post by Kevin Carson at C4SS, I promote it here (this may even help the casual observer to conclude that I’m posting to my blog on a regular basis). This commentary focuses on the real beneficiaries of stimulus packages. Time spent with Carson’s work is never wasted.

I need to work on some short projects for publication that are long overdue. But I haven’t forgotten about this blog’s faithful readers, and I hope to continue the conversation about law and anarchy here soon.

Carson on Bailouts

Once again, there's a chance to learn from and dialogue with Kevin Carson—as readers of this blog will know, something I think is always worth celebrating. This time, Carson reflects on “Bailouts, Double Standards, and Hypocrisy,” in another of the C4SS commentaries he now has the opportunity to produce on a regular basis. Please read and react.

The Non-Aggression Principle and the Pauline Principle

There is no one non-aggression principle. Rather, “non-aggression principle” names a family of norms precluding the initiation of force against others. One version, familiar to many readers, is the one found in the Libertarian Party’s membership pledge, which rejects “the initiation of force.”


One deontic cousin of the NAP is the Pauline Principle, which occupies a central place in natural law theory.

The Pauline Principle (I believe we owe the label to Alan Donagan in The Theory of Morality) gets its name from St. Paul’s characterization as justly damnable those who maintain that it is morally acceptable to do evil that good may come. Rejecting the possibility of doing evil to bring about good is sometimes understood to mean declining to violate a range of prohibitions, not necessarily connected but understood as absolute. But the new classical natural law (NCNL) theorists, who have done the best and most extensive contemporary work on this principle, have argued for a more general understanding, on which I will focus here.

The NCNL version of the Principle amounts to something like, “Do not cause harm purposefully.” On the view that doing something for the purpose of achieving some other end unavoidably involves identifying with one’s chosen means, so that an instrumental harm is a purposeful harm (“Whoever wills the end wills the means”), the NCNL theorists suggest that the Principle also includes the requirement: “Do not cause harm instrumentally.” (The NCNL theorists treat the Golden Rule’s requirement of fairness a a distinguishable norm which would surely preclude imposing risks of harm on others which one wouldn’t want imposed on oneself or one’s loved ones. So accepting the Golden Rule means accepting a further constraint, not itself part of the Principle but closely linked with it, which might be summarized as, “Do not cause harm recklessly.”)

There are interesting questions about the derivation and justification of the Pauline Principle, but I will not focus on them here. (Cp. Mark C. Murphy, Natural Law and Practical Rationality, and John M. Finnis, Fundamentals of Ethics.)

“Harm,” for the NCNL theorists, has a quite specific meaning. Something causes harm if it impedes, frustrates, inhibits, attacks, etc., someone’s participation in a basic aspect of human welfare. There are alternative lists of these basic aspects of welfare; they include life and bodily well being, speculative knowledge, practical reasonableness, friendship, æsthetic experience, and play. (Other items on some lists include religion, parenthood and family relationships, and self-integration.) These basic aspects of well being are non-fungible (so that one instance of friendship, say, isn’t strictly substitutable for another) and incommensurable (so that there’s no common scale on which whole categories of well being—or individual instances—can be measured and compared). Non-fungibility and incommensurability rule out consequentialism and related views in principle, since these views require something like maximizing or optimizing the overall good in the universe (or some more limited context), and, since the various aspects of well being aren’t reducible to some common substrate, the notion of “the overall good” turns out to be meaningless, vacuous, nonsensical.

It’s important to see what the Pauline Principle doesn’t preclude. By ruling out purposeful and instrumental attacks on basic aspects of well being, it does not rule out the use of force in defense of oneself or others. For, say the NCNL theorists, one can use force, including, if necessary, lethal force, defensively while intending only to stop an aggressor (or quasi-aggressor: the moral culpability of the person being stopped isn’t an issue, so the Principle wouldn’t preclude using force if necessary against, say, a sleepwalker with a gun), not, per se, to kill or harm the aggressor. The harm to the aggressor done by a defensive act isn’t purposeful: one’s goal isn't, as such, to harm; but it’s not instrumental, either: one’s purpose isn’t to stop-by-harming. Rather, the harm is a foreseen but unintended by-produce or side-effect of one’s stopping the aggressor.

There are all sorts of interesting things to be said about the Pauline Principle, its justification, consequentialism, etc. But I want to focus myself, and to focus our conversation, on the ways in which this norm, carefully explicated and rigorously defended, might be thought to overlap with and differ from the NAP.

One crucial distinction: many versions of the NAP understand “the initiation of force” to include the initiation of force against property. Since a person’s property is not among the basic aspects of well being recognized by NCNL theory, the Pauline Principle, ruling out attacks on these dimensions of human welfare, does not, per se, preclude attacks on or violations of people’s property.

This does not mean, of course, that NCNL theory does not take property seriously. Most importantly, the NCNL theorists see the Golden Rule’s requirement of fairness (that one ought not to make arbitrary distinctions between persons and that one ought to treat others as one would want to be treated oneself, or would want one’s loved ones to be treated)—taken together with various general facts about human beings and their circumstances—as grounding the basic principle that there ought to be property rights; and this same requirement would obviously constrain interference with other people’s property rights. But the requirement of fairness, though real and substantial, does not provide support for a prohibition on all purposeful or instrumental interference with anyone’s property.

This seeming disagreement regarding property is important, but perhaps not as important as it might seem. For some versions of the NAP, including the one contained in the LP pledge, make no specific reference to property. And it would not be clear just how much even a version that did refer simply to property generated different conclusions from the Pauline Principle. To know just how much conflict there was between the Pauline Principle and the hypothetical version of the NAP, it would be necessary to know just what definition of property was presupposed by or explicitly incorporated in the version of the NAP in question. There are, after all, vastly many accounts of property rights, and simply to refer to “property” is not to answer the question which of these theories should be endorsed.

Still, it is clear that many versions of the NAP would lead to more extensive moral restrictions on actions affecting the property of others than would the Pauline Principle as understood by the NCNL theorists. That’s one key difference.

John Finnis maintains that the Pauline Principle rules out slavery in principle. But it’s not altogether clear how. Nor is it obvious how the Principle excludes confinement and other restrictions on personal liberty.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that the NCNL theory lacks resources for dealing with such restrictions. To the extent that one wouldn’t like being subjected to them oneself, one has good reason, in accordance with the Golden Rule, to avoid imposing them on others. But the wrongness of slavery seems more unequivocal than this: someone who wouldn’t mind being enslaved still does wrong by enslaving. It is clear, by contrast, how the NAP rules out slavery (I ignore the issue of voluntary slave contracts here).

The NAP and the Pauline Principle lead in practice to many of the same outcomes. But the implications of the Pauline Principle as a safeguard for liberty remain unclear and deserve more study.