Anarchism, justice and a vision for the future
By Neil Lock
This essay began as a comment on Keith Preston’s “The New Anarchist Movement is Growing,” published here[1]. Soon, though, as I explored some of the ideas of various anarchist sects, it turned into something much wider. It became an attempt to answer, from my own highly individual perspective, four questions:
- In what sense or senses am I an anarchist?
- Which anarchist groups could I comfortably work with?
- Is the idea of an anarchist movement a sensible one?
- What might the world look like, if anarchist ideas were to be put into practice?
Am I an anarchist? – Part One
Webster’s definition of an anarchist is: “1: a person who rebels against any authority, established order, or ruling power.” It’s fair to say that includes me.
For example, I regard re-distributory taxation as theft. And worse; for not only does it take resources fairly earned by honest, productive people, and transfer them to the lazy and dishonest, but it allows the politically rich to take a huge cut on the way. I regard aggressive wars, for example in Iraq or Syria, as acts of terrorism. I regard those that lobby for, make or enforce bad laws as criminals. I take the same view of those that support policies, such as smoking bans, to cramp people’s lifestyles. And I regard any violation of human rights like privacy, however small and whatever excuse may be offered for it, to be a crime.
I feel no attachment to any political nation. I hate the state with its claims of immunities and moral privileges for its functionaries. I loathe the EU and the UN. I’m angered by the babel of lies and propaganda emitted by the media. I feel repelled by today’s popular culture. And I’m sick and tired of those that want to tell me how I should live. I’ve been more than 60 years on this planet, and I know what works for me and what doesn’t, thank you very much. Thus, I feel no sense at all of political community; indeed, I’ve come to regard politics as a dirty word.
As to left and right, I’m what Keith calls “neither fish nor fowl.” As an individualist, I detest the political left for their collectivism. As a lover of freedom, I detest the political right for their claims of sovereignty and their authoritarianism. And I detest the “centre” as much as either; for they seem to combine the worst features of both. But most of all, I have contempt and loathing for the entire corrupt, dishonest political process[2] and for all those that take part in it.
And I see democracy for the failure and the sham it is. Not only does it enable majorities to victimize minorities. But it also allows the political class to play people off against each other, and rule over everyone without concern for anyone but themselves and their cronies. I regard a vote for any political party as an assault against all those who are harmed by the policies of that party. So, I haven’t voted in almost 30 years now, and won’t vote for any politician ever again.
All this said, I don’t self identify as anarchist, for reasons I’ll come to later. Nevertheless, some of my friends do so identify; and many of them are happy to consider me as one of theirs. I even use a personal logo based on the anarchist flag. Though I prefer burgundy, the colour of wine, to the more usual red, the colour of socialism, blood and the US republican party.
So, yes; on the philosophical level at least, I’m an anarchist.
An anarchist vision? – Part One
Keith says that anarchists seek to create “decentralized societies with diverse and self-managed communities.” I can certainly buy into that idea. Part of my vision for the future, indeed, is that those who so wish will live in communities of like minded people, each on its own private land. Each such community will have its own rules for its members and for visitors, and its own sense of identity binding its members. In this, I’m not far away from Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s “private law societies.”
You might, for example, have socialist, mutualist, Catholic, Muslim, libertarian and traditionalist communes near each other, without any of them interfering in the others’ business. (Though, I suspect, members of some of these groups might accept invitations to the others’ parties!) But in addition to communards of different stripes, I envisage that many people will choose to live as they do today; as singles, as couples or in Western style nuclear families.
I’d also expect there to be economic communities of different types. Capitalist businesses, workers’ co-operatives, the one or two man band and the family firm are obvious examples. Some of these would be coterminous with communes in which people live; others not.
With me so far?
Flavours of anarchism
Keith’s essay is mainly concerned with introducing and describing a number of different anarchist sects. I found the beliefs of these sects so widely spread, even mutually contradictory, that it’s hard to imagine them ever working together. Which raised the question: which of these flavours of anarchism can I be comfortable with? I’ll aim to work upwards from the worst for me to the best for me.
I’ll start with green anarchists and primitivists. It seems to me that green anarchism is an oxymoron. For the green religion – the worship of the planet Gaia – is a militant one. Its acolytes won’t be satisfied until everyone in the world has been converted and “re-wilded.” And how anyone can do that without exercising a ruling power, I don’t know.
Besides which, the greens’ views are anathema to me personally. They want to dismantle Western civilization. They hate industry and technology. And they’re led by hypocrites like Al Gore and Prince Charles, whose stock in trade is to demand “sacrifice from thee, but not from me.” No, sorry; the green and black can’t be my friends.
On to feminists. Now individuals’ gender, like their race and birthplace, isn’t under their control. And therefore, in my view, it shouldn’t count against them. Thus far, feminists have a point; for there has, in the past, been oppression of women by men. And, in the Muslim world, there still is.
The flip side of that view is that people’s gender shouldn’t count for them, either. But feminists disagree. What they’ve done is ally with the ruling class to get their own interests favoured. So, Western women today can make false accusations of sexual harassment against men, or seek inflated divorce settlements; and they usually get away with it. Because of this, as long as feminism rules the roost, no Western man can enter into a relationship with a woman without the risk of being, to use a cliché, “taken to the cleaners.”
So, I find anarcha-feminism almost as self contradictory as green anarchism. Thus, the purple and black are no friends of mine, either.
Next come collectivists and communists (with a small c). My main issues with them are:
- I’m an individualist. I see any society as being for the benefit of the individuals in it. But collectivists and communists take the opposite view.
- They reject private property. But I regard property rights justly and honestly obtained through work and trade as not only valid, but vital. For me, property is life.
- They reject private ownership of the means of production. But my means of production is my mind. No-one but me can own my mind. Right?
- They agree with Marx’s dictum, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” But I prefer my own version: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his deserts.”
- It seems to me that, in terms of wealth distribution, they’re trying to solve the wrong problem. They see inequality as the problem; whereas for me, the problem is unjust wealth distribution. And they don’t even seem to see the underlying, and far bigger, problem; that unjust distribution of wealth is caused by unequal (and unjust) distribution of political power.
That said, I do recognize that it’s possible for people of a collectivist mind set to be genuine anarchists. So these people aren’t my enemies, as long as they don’t try to force their ideas on to me; but I still can’t work with them.
A little further up the food chain, but sporting the same red and black colours, are the syndicalists and trade unionists. I have, on a few occasions, worked with people of this stripe, particularly in the civil liberties area. They can be fine and amusing people. And they’re often enemies of my enemies. But they still aren’t really my friends.
Consider that when trade unions were first formed back in the 18th century, they were a great idea. They were set up to defend the rights of working people against the ruling establishment; so it’s hardly surprising that they were illegal until 1824. I also admire the workers who organized themselves to fight against fascism, particularly in Italy and Spain, in the first half of the 20th century. But against these, I can remember Britain in the late 1960s, when the trade unions ran the country. The result was a mess. As soon as they ally with the ruling élite, the power of trade unions becomes a negative to honest working people, not a positive.
Onwards and upwards to the orange and black, the mutualists. I do have a gripe or two with them. For one, they support the labour theory of value; I don’t (see here[3] for why). For two, their views appear, at least on the surface, to preclude any possibility of an individual building up a surplus of justly earned wealth, to be used on future projects or for a rainy day. But there’s one thing they and I agree on whole heartedly. That is, the economic free market. So if, ultimately, the difference between their philosophy and mine is that they prefer workers’ co-operatives while I prefer small scale capitalism, I can live with that.
Next come gay anarchists, the lavender and black. I myself have no homosexual tendencies; the best part of a decade in single sex boarding schools knocked any such leanings out of me. But I’m sympathetic towards gay people. For example, my barber is gay. Alan Turing, the seminal computer scientist, was gay – and was hounded to death by the state for it. And I have worked, in the industry he founded, with many fine people who also happened to be gay.
Like women, gay people have been victimized for something that is outside their control. But the big difference between gay people and feminists, as I see it, is that gay people are only demanding their basic human right to live as they wish; whereas the feminists demand power. So, while I reject feminists, I see no reason why gay anarchists shouldn’t be my friends.
Next I place the anarcho-pacifists, the white and black. My one major issue with them is that, though I consider pacifism to be a great idea in a perfect world, when taken to its extreme it’s impractical against the kind of vicious, criminal, statist slime we face.
At the same level as the pacifists I put a group Keith doesn’t mention, the Christian anarchists. I was brought up in a Protestant tradition, but lost the religion at the age of 16. Nevertheless I admire those Christians, whose attitude to the statists is along the lines of: “I obey God’s laws, not yours.” Personally, I prefer to put the argument in terms of natural law – the law natural to human beings – and so avoid any need to invoke a deity. But either way, we’re close. (As an aside, where are the anarchists of other religions? Muslim anarchists? Buddhist anarchists? An interesting question.)
To the top of this particular tree, the gold and black, the “an-caps” or anarcho-capitalists. I myself am economically a one man band, a highly skilled worker more than an entrepreneur. And I suffer for it, because the politicians keep on trying to declare my livelihood to be “illegal.” But I appreciate what honest capitalism – not crony “crapitalism,” forsooth! – has done already for Western civilization, and know it can do far more in the future. So, while I’m not strictly an-cap myself, they’re my friends.
An anarchist movement?
In his essay, Keith says much about an anarchist movement. But the problem with a movement is that it must have something to move towards. So, what is the vision which anarchists share, and can agree on with a fair degree of unanimity?
I gave my best understanding of how part of such a vision might be in the section “An anarchist vision? – Part One” above. But those are just my interpretations. Where are the definitive statements of where today’s anarchist movement wants to go, written by the anarchists themselves? And how are they going to get there?
Another question in the same area is, how does the movement plan to bring people on side with their vision? How do they plan to show that the idea is practical? How will they persuade people to buy into it – enough people actually to make change happen?
Am I an anarchist? – Part Two
I said earlier that I don’t self identify as an anarchist. Why is this? I see four reasons:
- Anarchists still have a bad reputation, because of the violence used by some of their 19th and early 20th century comrades.
- The anarchist spectrum is too wide. For any individual’s political views, there will always be anarchists diametrically opposed to those views. My dislike of greens and feminists, and lukewarm view of collectivists and syndicalists, are enough to persuade me that I couldn’t join an anarchist movement as at present constituted.
- Anarchists don’t seem to be able to articulate a shared vision of where they want to get to. Even if they could, the strategy for getting there seems unclear.
- It’s all very well to get rid of the state. But what happens then? In particular, do anarchists support a justice system, or not?
It’s this last issue which is the clincher for me. Suppose we had a society of communes, like the one I described earlier. Suppose there is commune of primitivists, who (rightly or wrongly – but that’s a separate issue) believe that human emissions of carbon dioxide cause catastrophic global warming, so must be stopped. And suppose that, close by, there is a capitalist work commune, which manufactures cement for builders. Now, cement production generates a lot of carbon dioxide; that’s a fact. Would the primitivists, then, be justified in raiding the capitalists, burning down their factory, and dumping their machinery and all their cement in the lake? If not, how do you prevent them? And if so, would the capitalists in their turn be justified, during a hot dry spell, in giving Nature a helping hand by setting fire to the primitivists’ forest? Anarchism, it seems to me, fails to answer these questions adequately.
What I say next may sound like a terrible pun. But: If anarchism can’t satisfactorily answer the justice question, then anarchist societies can only descend into anarchy.
Because of this, I self identify as a “minarchist.” But unlike some who use the same label, I don’t want a minimal state or a night watchman state. I’m as much against the state as any anarchist; I don’t want rulers. However, to deal with issues like the one I raised above, I’m happy to accept a minimal set of rules. The libertarian non-aggression obligation might be one such rule. And, in order for such rules to be generally respected, there must be some form of coercive apparatus which can, at the very least, enforce compensation by breakers of the rules to the victims of their offences.
So, the question I’m going to try to answer in the final section is: How can we have rules, without having any rulers? Or otherwise put, how can we have law and justice without a state?
An anarchist vision? – Part Two
I’ve already published a fairly detailed “Blueprint” for a society which includes justice and a code of law, but has no state or other central point at which power can collect[4]. But this is very much a work in progress. So today, I’ll step back from the detail. Instead, I’ll try to give a few of the key ideas, and to justify some of them.
Before there can be any system of justice, people must first agree on what justice is. My concept of justice – objective, individual justice, or as I like to put it, common sense justice – is, at its root, the flip side of Confucius’ Golden Rule. Confucius says: Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t like done to you. (Or, closer to the point, don’t do to others what they wouldn’t like done to themselves). So, I see justice as the condition in which each individual is treated, over the long run and in the round, as they treat others. If you don’t do harm to others, you shouldn’t have to suffer harm being done to you. And conversely, if you do harm others, you can hardly complain if others get together to harm you in return.
This idea is sure to make me enemies on both the political left and right. The left will ask, what happened to social justice? To which I’ll reply: If you fancy a particular flavour of social justice, go live in a commune that implements it! As to the right, they’ll fulminate darkly about its effects on their “heroes,” like the soldiers that invaded Iraq or the bureaucrats that intercept our e-mails. To which, I’ll shrug and say, “criminals deserve punishment.”
Unlike some libertarians, by the way, I do make a distinction between civil and criminal justice. Civil justice provides restitution to victims, whereas criminal justice can impose additional punishment where there is significant intention to violate rights or to do harm, independent of how much harm is actually caused. The planting, by an incompetent terrorist, of a bomb which fails to go off, is an example of an act which causes little or no damage to specific victims, but nevertheless deserves to attract heavy criminal law punishment.
The second fundamental idea, on which I base my vision, is the concept of moral equality. The way I put this is: What is right for one to do, is right for another to do in similar circumstances, and vice versa. This concept is, quite simply, one in the eye for the state. For the idea denies any right for anyone to tax people, make laws to bind people, make wars or do any of the other heinous acts politicians and state functionaries are so fond of, unless each and every individual has a balancing right to do similar things back to the perpetrators of those acts.
Why should I think that all individuals are morally equal? Well, what’s the alternative? If individuals aren’t morally equal, then some must be, in Orwellian phrase, more equal than others. So those, who want to deny the principle of moral equality, must answer three questions. 1: Who, exactly, deserves to have moral privileges that others don’t? 2: Why should those particular individuals be so privileged? And 3: Why should those, that deny moral equality for all, not themselves be thrown down to the very bottom of the heap?
From this common sense idea of moral equality, it follows that there exists a minimal moral code of what is right and wrong. And this is independent of time, place, culture, or the social status of an individual. In the Blueprint, I call it the Code of Civilization. To show that this code exists, I use a thought experiment with two large sheets of paper, one labelled “Prohibitions” and the other “Mandates.” On each sheet, the experimenter simply lists all acts and circumstances in which the acts are, respectively, wrong to do (so should be prohibited) and wrong not to do (so should be mandated). After a long time and severe depletion of the world’s supply of quills and ink, voilà! There is our Code.
This approach tells us that such a code exists; but it doesn’t tell us anything about what it actually is. To do that, we need to use a more conventional moral approach. Like the Mandelbrot set, the Code we seek may be complicated around the edges. But I, at least, think that a goodly chunk of it can be encapsulated in a few simple rules.
Confucius’ Golden Rule is a sure starter. To that, I’ll add a few others. The libertarian non aggression obligation (though, in my view, this may be broken if specifically necessary to bring someone to objective justice). An obligation to keep to contracts you freely enter into. Respect for others’ human rights, including fundamental rights such as life, liberty, property and privacy, rights of non-impedance such as freedom of opinion, speech, movement and association, and procedural rights such as presumption of innocence until proved guilty. An obligation to be always truthful and honest in dealing with others. And ultimately, a presumption of freedom. That is, where no other rule applies, individuals may do as they please.
As to how such a justice system might be structured, I’m quite certain that there can’t be any kind of legislative. Once the Code is agreed, it can of course be adapted to new situations through case law. But the only way in which the Code itself can be changed is through the acquisition of new knowledge on what is right and wrong. Any such change ought to take, at least, generations to work through and to be agreed by all affected. No more bad laws!
As to the executive, this one’s easy too. Anyone, subject perhaps to some reasonable qualifications like full age and no criminal convictions, has the right to bring a suspect to justice. This idea is hardly rocket science. Indeed, the idea of citizen’s arrest goes all the way back to Anglo-Saxon times.
Such a system will need judges; and I see no alternative to their being specialists. How to make, and keep, the judges honest, is an interesting question. I see three parts of a possible solution. First, free market competition between courts or, as I call them, “justice providers.” Second, a sane appeals procedure. And third, a general presumption among the population that anyone with any kind of power over others, such as a judge, must meet exceptionally high standards of objectivity, honesty and integrity, and deserves public censure as soon as they fail to do so. The latter condition will also apply to the replacement, which I call “quality reporters,” for today’s politicized and dishonest media.
And there are, of course, many, many gaps still to be filled, and issues still to be addressed, in such a vision.
In conclusion
I really do hope that these ideas will interest many people unhappy with the current political system. And I look forward to constructive feedback, not only from established anarchists like Keith Preston, but also from those thinking about anarchism as a potential candidate for a way forward for the human race.
References:
[1] http://attackthesystem.com/2015/12/22/the-new-anarchist-movement-is-growing/
[2] For more from me on these matters, see http://thelibertarianalliance.com/2015/06/20/the-unholy-trinity-collectivism-sovereignty-corruption/
[3] http://thelibertarianalliance.com/2016/01/25/the-beauty-of-entrepreneurship/
[4] http://thelibertarianalliance.com/2015/07/12/a-blueprint-for-human-civilization/
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[…] By Neil Lock […]
I’ve read this through. There’s a lot I could say, but I don’t want to start nitpicking. Two main points come out of this for me:
1. First – and this is something I have raised frequently but never seem to receive a completely satisfactory answer to – I don’t understand how a property-based society could work without a state. Property is a bundle of rights. These rights need to be enforceable by somebody if they are to have meaning. That ‘somebody’ is the state, or something or somebody that resembles the state. Yes? So therefore, anarcho-capitalism – to take one example – is, by definition, statist. It can’t be otherwise, unless you want to define ‘state’ in a very restrictive (and highly-constructed) way.
I do accept there are very narrow and transient circumstances where a non-state type of property society could work, mainly in a primitive context in which you would have an embryonic or emergent state whose authority would be based on whichever group could effectively deploy or procure violence, however I see that as an exception that can only effectively regulate very limited situations.
However, I know you state you are not strictly an anarchist, but in fact a minarchist. Ok, fair enough, but if I’m not mistaken, you seem to be arguing for an anarcho-capitalist or market anarchist type of arrangement in which justice is enforced by private businesses and other non-state organisations. Are you saying, then, that the residual authority for this justice system, and thus property rights, would vest in the minimal state? if so, then I don’t really see any meaningful difference between your minarchism and the Traditional Libertarianism of people like Dr. Gabb. Indeed, the principles you outline as the basis of your society could pretty much pass as a summary of English Common Law. That’s no bad thing, of course, even if true.
2. Second, wouldn’t all this depend on having a community of people with a common understanding of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and respect for certain fictions and constructions? This is especially so given that you will not be codifying rules but relying on broad moral and ethical nostrums that are highly susceptible to interpretation. How will you keep out those people who do not share a similar moral and ethical understanding of things? Wouldn’t you need, if only implicitly, some understanding of borders and some kind of shared legal understanding of immigration (i.e. who can enter the community and who can’t, for what reasons and under what circumstances and so on)? Wouldn’t this then lead inexorably to some kind of legal authority that could enforce the community’s preferences? And if so, wouldn’t this undermine the notion of minarchism, and certainly anarchism? There would have to be quite a significant state apparatus and a broad acknowledgement of the necessity of such.
Tom,
On your (1): For me, the state is the thing that implements sovereignty. Sovereignty is what, according to the theory of Jean Bodin, allows a ruling class to exercise power over everyone else in a particular territory (see http://thelibertarianalliance.com/2015/06/20/the-unholy-trinity-collectivism-sovereignty-corruption/ for more from me on that). Sovereignty implies moral inequality: “I have a right to tax you, but you don’t have a right to tax me,” for example. And that’s the philosophical base on which today’s states are built.
The purpose of my final section is to suggest how we might have government without a ruling class. If you can say specifically why the whole thing would fall apart, I’ll certainly take note!
When you say “residual authority,” what do you mean? I’d really like to be able to do without such a thing. As I say, I’m not far away here from Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s private law societies (https://mises.org/library/idea-private-law-society).
On your (2): Maybe I didn’t make it sufficiently clear that I’m looking at this issue on two levels. One, a Code of Civilization which is independent of culture, and applies to everyone. The other, the rules imposed by each commune on its members (and, one presumes, on visitors too). So, my answer to “How will you keep out those who don’t share your moral/ethical understanding?” comes in three parts:
1. If you’re an individual, you don’t let them into your property.
2. If you’re a member of a commune, you agree with your fellow communards not to let them into your common property.
3. If they are so remiss as to fail to keep to the Code (for example, by committing aggressions against innocent people – or even, begorrah, by trespassing on your property!), then you have the right to bring them to justice.
Thank you for the response. I’m going to have to give this some further thought. I think my views are somewhat in transition as to libertarianism. I think there may be some basis for you to convince me, but it’s a matter I need to mull over.
For now:
Regarding (1), I think the basis flaw in this is your constructed definition of the ‘state’, something I go into more below. As I see it, any society based on property ownership must have residual legal authority (‘RSA’) somewhere in a personalty separate to, and figuratively above, individual citizens, even if corporate personalities are not permitted. That RSA is (or will become), by its nature, the practical source of sovereignty because it can make decisions, and to use your phraseology, exercise moral privileges over individuals, including even those individuals who make up the ruling class. You would not be able to have enforceable property rights without the RSA, but that’s a tautology. A simpler way of putting it would be: You cannot have property without the RSA.
What I mean by a ‘constructed state’ can be illustrated this way. I see the concept of the constructed state [this and RSA are my invention, so take it with a pinch of salt] as a basic flaw in any form of anarchistic libertarianism based on property ownership.
Let us imagine that a small group of property-owners in a given locale form a communal association to provide for drainage and irrigation of their land and engage in other projects of joint interest. These property owners (we’ll call them ‘members’), decide that they need to keep out undesirables from staying on their land, so they also form a militia. They also decide to take possession of some nearby forestry and swamp land, which migrants frequently cross, and turn it into a buffer zone, to aid defence of their community. In keeping with the members’ ideological principles, ownership of this new land will be divided into parcels and shared, rather than held in common by the association, with members granting easements to each other for the purpose of operating the militia.
What the members are doing in this example is taking collective action. Some of the legal formalities might be individualised on paper, but in practice these members are acting collectively. If they manage to keep the numbers in their community relatively small, it may be that the association itself does not take on any sort of coercive characteristics in its dealings with members, but it must do so in its dealings with outsiders, and even if the association, consistent with any unincorporated body, cannot lawfully act as a separate legal personality, it will still resemble a unitary body to the outside world. It is not difficult to see that this body would in time come to be an RSA in all but name: i.e. the body that provides the legal basis for the coercive actions of its members. The members would presumably also have to pay the fees and costs of the association, as well as contributing to any joint projects, and will also need to allow other members on to their land for this purpose.
Imagine next that disputes arise between individual members, or even between the association and members. How will these be resolved? If private courts or arbitration are to be used, the judgements will need to be enforced, which means you will need enforcement agents who are empowered to levy and seize property and goods and take physical possession of these when warranted. Where does the authority come from to do this? You will say in private law, by means of contract, but where is the authority to enforce those contracts? Whichever way you look at it, in the end, there must be an RSA. Think of it as the seed from which all forms of authority, and thus sovereignty, cascades through society. That, in effect, is what the Crown is – or used to be – in pre-modern England. And that’s why my position is not that your idea can’t work, just that I think you would have to acknowledge that there would be a need for a seed of lawful authority, an RSA – which, to put it bluntly, would be statist sovereignty. That doesn’t mean you have lost the general argument, it just means that your ideas must be modified to account for the reality that coercion is needed in anything other than a very simple community. What I have summarised is, as I understand it, more or less the position of Traditional Libertarianism in Britain, albeit using different language and perhaps with a different conceptual understanding in places.
Your response on (2) makes sense, but again my point is that communards will only work together if they have an identifiable common interest, which may or may not be concretised in some form of common or shared land ownership. That being the case, this common interest is in effect a state because it uses coercion, with its legitimacy based on the majority consent of its founders. Even if many of your communal associations are so small that unanimity is a realistic possibility, there still remains the problem of creeping institutionalisation of whatever method is used for communal governance, such as it is.
I cannot help but observe that a lot of your thinking here is based on verbal constructions of concepts to fit libertarian ideology. For instance, you attempt to re-style the state as a ruling class, and your point is well-taken that the state does act as a sort of ruling committee for a distinct and discrete class in society, but if the state is just a legal authority that can use force in its own right, monopolistically or otherwise, then your communal associations (groups of private landowners) potentially are emergent or embryonic states.
I do accept that a lot of this is susceptible to interpretation, though. For instance, we could argue the English state prior to the era of the Commonwealth, the Glorious Revolution and the first Act of Union was not really a state as such in the modern sense, and certainly not in the sense we would recognise it, the feudal system and judge-made law being the basis for good order in pre-modern society. Arguably, England only properly became a statist country during the technocratic expansion that resulted from industrialisation and urbanisation. Nevertheless, we can say that pre-modern England had institutions that, taken together, resembled the state as they were coercive, even if they did better-reflect the organic nature of society. I think any libertarian (or indeed, anarchoid) argument that focuses on technical definitions of the state and limits itself to nominative contentions about what is or is not a ‘state’ has to be seen as weak, if not flawed, and must inevitably slide into semantics, as the existential reality of normative coercion is ignored. Having said that, I accept you have never argued that there would be a total absence of coercion, and normative coercion is an improvement on legalistic coercion. But we should perhaps acknowledge that coercion is axiomatic to society.
Tom, I think the easiest answer I can give you on this point is to refer you to one of my earlier essays, http://thelibertarianalliance.com/2015/11/03/community-what-community/, and in particular to the bit about the city state which gets taken over by a king. A relatively benevolent system, with a government but no real ruling class, morphs into a state with a ruling class.
I appreciate Neil’s effort to provide such a comprehensive response to my earlier piece. Whenever someone makes a serious effort to respond to one of my writings, I feel an obligation to offer a reply. So here goes.
First, as to theories of justice. While I generally agree with the libertarian view of social ethics in a purely conventional sense, on the more abstract level I am a moral skeptic, meaning I think there is no such thing as good/evil, right/wrong, justice/injustice. Meaning that the cosmos doesn’t care what we do to each other. I also think any serious political philosophy has to begin by recognizing human limitations. Whatever their handicaps in the field of actual evolutionary biology, I suspect the social Darwinists were correct to essentially regard human life as war with survival of the fittest being the only real “natural law” there is.
As for the nature of politics, I’m definitely in the tradition of thinkers like Machiavelli, Hobbes, Nietzsche, Carl Schmitt, and Max Weber, all of whom more or less agreed that the essence of politics is being able to kill someone in order to advance your own interests. Politics is about the exercise of raw power on behalf of self-interested groups.
As for the Anarchist vs. Minarchist debate, I think this sets up a false dichotomony. Again, the question is still one of who gets to do violence to whom? Whether the answer is “the state” or the Private Defense Agency, peoples’ militia, or common law tribunal, the issues are still the same.
“The Golden Rule” is generally a good idea on a practical level concerning issues like common crime and common personal ethics though, again, the cosmos doesn’t care. Also, most self-proclaimed adherents of “Golden Rule” ethics aren’t libertarians of any kind and don’t claim to be. So it’s far from self-evident that the “Golden Rule” implies libertarian politics. Also, “Golden Rule” ethics doesn’t really solve wider controversies like abortion, animal rights, environmental care, property theory, land ownership, capital punishment, just war theory, children’s rights, duty to care for needy others, free rider/public goods, labor/management relations, sexual morals, identity interests, etc. It’s not uncommon to find sincere and well intentioned people on both sides of these kinds of controversies. Ultimately, I think most people adopt whatever moral values serve the interests of themselves and their reference groups, or the norms of their community of origin.
Not to sound like a braggart, but I’ve studied what probably amounts to hundreds of political ideologies, and based on my experience I’d say I have as much knowledge in this area as any lay person and most academic specialists in political science, and political philosophy. But the funny thing is that I have never discovered a political philosophy whose adherents I thought were fit to rule society, and this includes libertarians and anarchists.
Generally, I find the state to be abominable from the perspective of practical human interests and well-being: e.g. hundreds of millions were killed by modern states in the past century alone, and the historic legacy of the state in most societies from the time of the agricultural revolution onward was to enslave most people or render them to the status of servants or peasants, not to mention the legacy of colonialism/imperialism and wars between states. Augustine once said that “states without justice are robber bands writ large” or something to that effect. And while I don’t believe in abstract, cosmic, or objective justice or morality, on a purely conventional level it’s probably safe to say there has rarely if ever been a “state with justice.” Most historic states have more closely resembled those of the typical Third World dictator than Switzerland.
As a general rule, it’s probably safe to say that concentrated power is almost always a bad thing and its only justification might be to repel force exercised by an even worse concentrated power. Another thing is that I actually agree with left-anarchists that other institutions besides the state can certainly be abusive as well, though the state has unique powers other institutions don’t have.
Consequently, it’s best that power should be spread out among as many different kinds of individuals, groups, organizations, and institutions as possible.
As for the wider points Neil raises concerning the viability of an actual anarchist movement, a shared anarchist vision, and a post-state world, I can only speak for myself on these questions. I am interested in the many different schools of anarchism that Neil references from my earlier piece (and many others that I didn’t mention) because I don’t really think a “one size fits all” approach is appropriate. My own vision is very similar to Neil’s.
“You might, for example, have socialist, mutualist, Catholic, Muslim, libertarian and traditionalist communes near each other, without any of them interfering in the others’ business. (Though, I suspect, members of some of these groups might accept invitations to the others’ parties!) But in addition to communards of different stripes, I envisage that many people will choose to live as they do today; as singles, as couples or in Western style nuclear families.
I’d also expect there to be economic communities of different types. Capitalist businesses, workers’ co-operatives, the one or two man band and the family firm are obvious examples. Some of these would be coterminous with communes in which people live; others not.”
This is why I consider myself to be a “pan-anarchist” that favors many different kind of anarchic communities with really embracing any one distinct model of anarchy. In fact, I’m widely reviled by some anarchists for holding these views on the grounds that I allegedly don’t give enough attention to their favorite social issue, economic system, or identity group. However, I think the only kind of anarchism that could work on a massive scale would be some kind of decentralized, pluralistic, particularism. As I recently said in another forum on this blog:
“It is certainly true that the kind of libertarianism that most of the people on this blog adhere to is rooted in classical English liberalism or, in the wider sense, the European/Western Enlightenment tradition. This kind of limited government/free market/property rights Mises-Hayek-Friedman-Rand-Rothbard influenced libertarianism only has any real following in the English-speaking countries from what I can tell. Even on the European continent it seems to be fairly uncommon. The libertarian movement has grown in the US in recent years thanks largely to Ron Paul, but I’m not sure that’s spurred a growth in libertarianism elsewhere. Others here would likely have more insight into that than I would. Modern libertarianism of this kind is very similar to the 19th century individualist anarchism of Benjamin R. Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Max Stirner, etc. However, even back then Peter Kropotkin pointed out that this type of anarchism hardly existed outside of America and England, and he thought that had to do with the strong classical liberal roots of those countries as opposed to the more communal traditions of other societies, including European ones.
However, the wider communal anarchist tradition has actually exercised a great deal of influence outside the West in places such as China and Latin America. The anarchist movement in China in the early 20th century was about as large as the movement in the West. There are certainly many cultural, political, and social traditions in other parts of the world that overlap with anarchist or libertarian ideas of some kind, e.g. China, Latin America, West Africa, Polynesia, American Indians, Russian and Slavic peasant communal traditions. Ghandi’s satyagraha movement in India was very similar to anarchism. You can find anarchistic tendencies within various sub-strands of Islam. Right now, the most interesting quasi-anarchistic social experiment that’s going on anywhere in the world is in Kurdistan with the Murray Bookchin-influenced “democratic confederalism” of the PKK-oriented groups there. Five years ago, I would have thought Kurdistan was the last place on earth where the next anarchist insurgency would take place. But it happened. There are other comparable examples.”
I think an anarchist civilization might well be something similar to Robert Nozick’s “Utopia of utopias” concept where there would be all kinds of particular communities reflecting the ideals of their members.There might be “panarchist” regions with non-territorial competing governments, and there might be communist communities, anarcho-syndicalist worker federations, and super-capitalist Ayn Randian communities, and agrarian or primitivist communities along with seasteads or space colonies.
But to make this work I think there would need to be a society-wide or civilization-wide ethos of decentralized “universal anti-univeralism” in the sense that there was a common understanding that, yes, there will be radically different or even diametrically opposite ways in life in many different kinds of communities, and that’s okay even if others don’t necessarily agree with a community’s or region’s particular norms or social arrangements. Just like the Greek civilization was an agglomeration of many city-states with a shared reverence for the gods of Olympus, so would the anarchist civilization be something like an agglomeration of city-states with a shared reverence for decentralized universal anti-universalism.
As for the issue of “getting there from here,” I’ve written quite a bit about this question in other contexts. But generally speaking, whether the tactical methodology involves a pan-anarchist political party, secession by regions and localities, disengagement by withdrawal of consent, a mass revolution, or some combination of these, I think the key is to merely work to forge a society-wide consensus in favor of decentralized pluralistic particularism, or universal anti-universalism. So that’s really the principal challenge.
Many thanks Keith, I’ll need a few days to digest this!
@Keith Preston: Social Darwinists are fringe loons for believing in that “survival of the fittest” nonsense. Even the arch Darwinist, Dawkins, doesn’t hold to any such nonsense. On the contrary, providing a satisfactory mechanism for explaining altruism is a big problem for Darwinists.
Humans are social animals with all that implies, even if you believe we’re simply meat machines.
I should probably add that all the arguments that exist among anarchists today existed among classical anarchists: pacifists vs insurrectionists, communists vs laissez faire, Jewish anarchists vs anti-Semitic anarchists, crypto-Marxists vs anti-Marxists, anarcho-nationalists vs anti-nationalists, futurists vs Luddites, Christians vs atheists, gradualists vs revolutionists, feminists vs anti-feminists, sexual libertines vs sexual conservatives, etc. You had people in the IWW that were into organizing immigrant workers and others that supported the Chinese exclusion movement. Johan Most and Ben Tucker refused to recognize each other as “true” anarchists. None of these debates are new.
Keith,
Many thanks for your response. I’m pleased to find that our visions are not so far apart – as you say, something of a “Utopia of Utopias” – even though our philosophical roots seem to be all but opposites. For while you side with thinkers like Hobbes who see human beings as naturally bad, I come from the other side of that particular aisle.
That doesn’t, of course, mean that I approve in any way of politics as at present practised. Indeed, I see politics as a sub-human activity, and those that take part in it as criminal aberrations. So, when you say “I have never discovered a political philosophy whose adherents I thought were fit to rule society,” you have my hearty agreement.
As to who gets to do violence to whom, the answers I’m trying to formulate are: (a) anyone can do violence provided it’s justified, (b) no-one should be subjected to violence unless it’s justified. I’m trying to separate the questions “who may do it?” and “who may suffer it?” from “who decides?” Maybe I didn’t get that over well enough.
I agree that the Golden Rule, on its own, isn’t enough to be a workable ethical code. Nor, indeed, is the libertarian non-aggression obligation – though that’s a whole other ball game.
Your list of wider controversies is a good one. I think my position on such issues might be summarized as: as long as an act doesn’t cause damage (direct or indirect) to other humans beyond the willing participants, then no-one has a right generally to forbid it. Although, of course, the members of individual communes can mutually agree to do so within the commune. So, for example, a Catholic commune wouldn’t allow abortion, while a libertarian commune might. This position, I hope, can also deal with issues like inter-communal pollution and compensation therefor.
I’m not sure about the use of the words particularism and universalism in this context. For me, there is a minimum universal morality (what I called the Code of Civilization) which arises out of human nature, so is common to all. Then, on top of that, particular communities can each have their own moral codes. I see it as a bit like a universalist trunk supporting particularist tree branches. Another, more conventional way to look at it might be to see the underlying code as like “international” law, supporting the law codes of many different individual societies.
Once again, many thanks for your thoughts.
I agree that the views of the early social Darwinists were crude and overstated. Kropotkin wrote a very good book refuting their more excessive ideas over a century ago. But Darwinism actually explains the tendency for in-group altruism very well, i.e cooperation and mutual aid as a factor in species adaptability. In fact, there is an evolved tendency among humans for over-immersion into organized group identities that become pathological (see Arthur Koestler on this, who ironically wasn’t a Darwinist but fell back on some kind of neo-Lamarckian position). What the social Darwinists got right was their application of Darwinian theory to the in-group/out-group dichotomy. I would add that another necessary insight was provided by Hayek with his insights about “the worst getting to the top.” Experiments on group think are also very important to this question as well.
@Keith Preston you’re in contradiction to Darwinists who would deny there is such thing as group selection. Social Darwinism makes no sense – it’s applying principles of genetics to social culture, that’s nonsense. That’s not to say culture doesn’t evolve in a real sense but appeals to genetics are questionable because culture is meta process. Hence Dawkins talking about memes. Like many people, you’re confused about evolution and about genetics.
“you’re in contradiction to Darwinists who would deny there is such thing as group selection.”
But is that something which is endemic to Darwinism itself, or is it merely the position of certain Darwinists? Group selection was widely accepted by Darwinists until probably the middle part of the 20th century, and has also started to make something of a comeback in recent years even if it’s a controversial and (now heretical) position. What about multilevel selection theory?
“That’s not to say culture doesn’t evolve in a real sense but appeals to genetics are questionable because culture is meta process.”
Do you think the kinds of culture different peoples create has no roots in their genetic composition? I’m not arguing for biological or genetic determinism, but wouldn’t genetic endowments have an interactive relationship with social and environmental factors in the unfolding of cultural evolution?
“Hence Dawkins talking about memes.”
I thought he was using that in an analogous sense. Maybe I’m wrong. However, is there not a type of natural selection process that guides social evolution as well as biological evolution?
“like many people, you’re confused about evolution and about genetics.
Oh, no doubt about it. I only have a casual level knowledge of those fields.
@Keith Preston – taking your points in order:
* This Wikipedia page is a review of a book that bears on the controversy over just what evolution is and how it relates to genes – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawkins_vs._Gould
* I’m fond of pointing out that genetics is *everything*. The reason you’re a man and not a monkey is 100% genes. But mapping culture to genetics just doesn’t really work if nothing else because culture changes far too rapidly for that idea to fly;
* From my reading Dawkins didn’t mean memes to be a metaphorical construct. I believe he’s doubled down on the idea in his latest writings (he’s gone to far round the bend into scientism for my liking nowadays). It would indeed be Dawkin’s assertion that there is a type of natural selection process that guides social evolution and his memes are a part of that. Personally I don’t think that flies because biological evolution is a process without embodied intelligence but cultures are intelligent because of the intelligent agents that make up the culture and its development (actually I think that ought to be self-evident but so many people want to believe we’re simply mechanistic meat robot automatons);
* Yes, I’m still learning – evolution is a fact, certain as the turning of the Earth, and gravity. Theories of it, however, are still very much under construction.
Gunships in high orbit… sigh
Welcome back Paul, good to hear from you again. I agree with what you say about capitalism – and I have my reservations about Trump too.
As to militias (a word I didn’t mention in the essay), I think a “Utopia of Utopias” style world would be a lot more peaceful than what we suffer today. It’s quite possible that, in that environment, community militias and private defence forces might be enough to deal with the likely threats of violence.