To begin, allow me to express some regret for not having contributed to this blog in more than a year.
I had prepared a series of essays to drip-feed throughout the whole of last year. However, I realised too late that they all need much revision, for which I unfortunately never found the time. I hope to make amends in 2025.
However, it’s also delightful to see a recent uptick in contributions from other authors, and it will be a pleasure to supplement these with my own modest contributions.
One realisation that has crystallised during the intervening reflection time is that much discussion of libertarianism – and of political philosophy in general – has disappeared down a number of rabbit holes. This is either because they have merely become unnecessarily complicated by our own vernacular and/or because a number of false or misleading assumptions have taken hold.
As such, through the enunciation of a few basic truths, this essay attempts to restore a degree of clarity and simplicity.
Truth No. 1 – Libertarianism is Simple and Basic
If I had a pound for every occasion on which my advocacy for liberty has been dismissed as “ideological”, “utopian” or “impractical”, I’d be well on the way to being a rich man.
Some of these allegations I have dealt with previously. This present rebuttal, however, may be more incisive:
Libertarianism is not an ideology, nor is it even a political system. Rather, it is a an ethic that governs the most basic level of human interaction.
Fundamentally, there are only three ways in which each individual human can engage in such interaction:
1. Leave other people alone entirely.
2. Co-operate on a voluntary basis for mutual benefit.
3. Use physical force to compel others to do what you want for your benefit at their expense.
Excluding category one – which would entail everyone living as a hermit – only categories two and three remain.
Actions falling within category two include anything from avoiding physical interaction with each other’s person or property to the consensual use or transfer of the same.
Category three, on the other hand, includes:
• Murdering other people
• Assaulting them
• Stealing property in their possession.
• Sincere threats to do any of the above.
Libertarianism and its doctrines – the “non-aggression principle”, “private property”, “self-ownership”, etc. – basically boil down to proscribing category three.
Far, therefore, from being “ideological”, “impractical” or “utopian”, libertarianism simply repeats very old, basic and intuitive rules:
Don’t murder other people; don’t assault other people; don’t take their stuff.
Rules so old that they appear in the Ten Commandments.
Rules so intuitive that children readily grasp them when squabbling over their toys.
Rules so basic that anyone, if asked, wouldn’t hesitate in agreeing that such behaviour is immoral and evil.
In fact, the only difference between libertarians and absolutely everyone else is that the former apply these rules consistently to all individuals, regardless of status.
That murder does not suddenly become “okay” simply because it is executed by an individual wearing a crown.
That theft of property does not become allowable simply because it is voted for in a grand chamber, etched into parchment, and referred to as a “tax”.
Even though they may not realise it in these terms, the vast majority of people reserve an exception to these rules for the state. That the people populating this institution, uniquely, can murder, thieve and assault, so long as they are doing so in their “official” state-designated capacity.
And, moreover, that ordinary people can benefit from said murder, theft and assault so long as such benefits are delivered to them through the state apparatus.
Indeed, the state is nothing more than the formal institutionalisation of violence that benefits some at the expense of others. There is no way in which the state can operate to benefit everyone.
All social orders throughout history have consisted of varying mixtures of institutionalised force and voluntary co-operation. Everything that is known or knowable about any one of them is congruent with the basic nature of either of these two options. And the lessons have generally been the same.
The more that a social order has institutionalised voluntary co-operation, the more prosperous it has normally become, and the more advanced its civilisation and culture. Such has been the history of much of the West for the past several centuries.
On the other hand, the more an order has moved towards institutionalised force and violence, the more that society has degenerated into an impoverished mass of mutual plunder, resulting in nothing but misery, destitution, retrogression, or, at best, stagnation. The former Soviet Union went this way almost from the start; it is arguably the direction in which the West is travelling owing to the loss of its former values.
Whole libraries have been filled with attempts to justify the modern, democratic state as a “voluntary” institution. That taxation, for instance, is in fact a consensual act, or state regulations are designed to preserve “shared” values.
The merits of this view – and I submit that there are none – are not our concern here. The results, however, most certainly are.
Theft and force by the democratic state have exactly the same effect on people’s behaviour – and ultimately upon societal wealth, civilisation and culture – as those acts would in any other kind of setting.
In fact, they may often be worse in a democracy given that the degeneracy is presumed to have a legitimate basis.
Truth No.2 – Liberty is not “Freedom”
Like most libertarians, I have tended to use the words “liberty” and “freedom” interchangeably. These days, however, I avoid this habit, because political liberty has a very precise meaning.
In Rothbard’s words, liberty is an “absence of molestation by other persons; it is purely an interpersonal problem”.[1]
What liberty does not mean is utter absolution from any and every other possible restriction that the circumstances of the world may impose upon your will.
It does not, for instance, entail “freedom” from difficulties created by material reality. The fact that we must work to produce, that we get hungry, that we get sick, and that we are each fated to live a finite lifespan are all impositions of nature, not of other human beings.
Neither, also, however, is your liberty constrained by the existence and property claims of other people – nor by what those people may choose to do with their property by themselves.
While, at any one moment, the existence of such people curtails your available options – you can’t take their belongings for yourself, for instance – there is no “molestation” that reduces your liberty. Your liberty is diminished only when the physical integrity of your own property is violated.
Within that realm of interpersonal relations, liberty concerns which acts towards other people should be legal or illegal, not moral or immoral. While questions of legality and legal enforcement are permeated with ethical considerations, there is, nevertheless, a conceptual difference that is easily overlooked:
Legality denotes the sphere in which you may choose to act (i.e. without physical reprisal).
Morality concerns how you should choose to act within that designated sphere.
The fact, therefore, that morality tells us there are bad choices that people could make doesn’t mean that a person should be legally restrained from making those choices.
Neither does the existence of good choices mean that a person may be compelled to make those good choices.
The notion that an individual may be legally (i.e. physically) forced to behave morally is nonsensical.
For one thing, such behaviour presupposes that the agent in question is an actor, with the ability to perform good or bad actions, to be a saint or a sinner. Robbing an individual of that capacity doesn’t, therefore, make him more moral. It simply turns him into an automaton.
More incisively, moral truths are not handed to us on a silver platter. In the same way that the discovery of empirical knowledge requires individuals to perform experiments, so too do individuals have to reason in order to reach moral conclusions – conclusions which (again, like scientific results) may be disputed.
And even where higher level, more “abstract” moral truths are either obvious or agreed, one must still refine those values into specific, concrete actions so they may find fulfillment in particular circumstances. Living one’s best life in the Arctic is a very endeavour from doing so in the Sahara desert, for instance.
Grappling with such problems is, in fact, the very raison d’être of human existence. Every moment of our lives, each of us has to decide upon the best course of action to take. It is that decision-making capacity that separates us from animals and dead matter.
The necessity of this task cannot be wished away; the only thing we can change is who gets to decide – i.e. who is the final arbiter with power to determine that one choice is a better option for your person and property than an alternative?
Allocating that decision-making authority is the very purpose of political philosophy. Therefore, to cite “morality” as a reason for denying an individual his decision-making rights is an egregious case of begging the question.
However, the flipside to all of this is the fact that the legal freedom to do what you want with your person or property in no way means that morality has nothing to say about the matter (as some more “libertine” libertarians presume).
Legality serves as the prerequisite for morality, not to preclude it – the mere fact that something is legal doesn’t make it moral.
For instance, the fact that no one has the right to physically stop you doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for you to do jump off a cliff.
Similarly, your legal right to become an alcoholic doesn’t mean drinking yourself into a stupor is either good or commendable behaviour.
In short, the fact that you can choose to do something doesn’t mean that you should.
Truth No. 3 – Liberty is not “Individualism”
Another concept that tends to be identified strongly, but often mistakenly, with libertarianism is “individualism”.
Now, to avoid misunderstanding, libertarians are individualists. However, we are so primarily in the methodological sense. That is, we start from the premise that only individuals can think, feel, choose and act. As such, we analyse social phenomena from that understanding.
We reject collectivist methodology that suggests “society” has needs, desires and interests independent of, or “more important” than, any one person – thinking which leads to the notion that the needs of society must be “balanced” with the needs of the individual.
This latter kind of thinking is simply a category error. “Society” refers to the sum total of social co-operation between individuals. While – as we shall in a moment – facilitation of such co-operation may require some immediate curtailment of individual behaviour, society is not, in and of itself, a living, thinking entity that has any substantive needs or desires. Anything that is done by or for society is done by or for of specific individuals within that society.
Thus, any attempts to “override” the interests of “individuals” with those of “society” must always amount to enforcing the needs and interests of some individuals at the expense of others. And so it is when the state carries out acts of theft, murder and assault under the guise of acting in such “collective” interests.
The kind of individualism that liberty does not entail is what we might call sociological individualism – the notion that only the glorification or “fulfilment” of the individual self is what matters, with community, society, etc. relegated to being of no or minimal importance.
Again, more “libertine” libertarians tend to adopt this kind of view. But it is not an implication of libertarianism as such, and, ironically, may be inimical to the preservation of liberty.
Why? Because, aside from the handful of hermits, each of us must engage in social co-operation with others if life is to rise above the most crushing levels of poverty.
The wheels of such co-operation cannot turn in a vacuum but are greased by rules, customs, habits, traditions, values, and other factors that seek to co-ordinate and maintain its momentum.
So, to return to our gulf between legality and morality, the mere fact that you are legally “entitled” to do what you want with your person and property does not mean that it is a good thing for you to ignore all of these vital sociological aspects.
For instance, the mere fact that you have the “right” to be lazy, rude, ignorant, or to have sex on your front lawn in plain view of all of your neighbours, doesn’t mean that these are wise courses of behaviour. Nor should you ignore other people’s opinions or attitudes towards them.
To avoid misunderstanding, none of this means that certain aspects of sociological individualism are unimportant in a free society. A respect for personal privacy, for instance, tends to be a recurring feature in freer societies, only to be eroded if that society becomes less free.
Nor are we saying that an individual should never rebel against every single little social more, custom or tradition that happens to be observed, succumbing to mindless groupthink. Indeed, sometimes a courageous loner is needed to demonstrate that there are better ways of doing things.
All we are saying is that these sociological aspects cannot be ignored.
The notion that libertarianism leads to rampant, atomistic individualism is promulgated in order to foster a false dichotomy:
That only the state can bring about society and all of the wonderful things it brings (and, hence, to choose society is to choose the state), whereas to opt for liberty is to descend into selfishness and barbarism.
But as should be clear by now, libertarianism concerns the terms on which social co-operation proceeds between individuals and, hence, which individuals society benefits.
Is it an institution for mutual benefit through voluntary co-operation?
Or is it an institution that benefits some people at the expense of others through the use of force?
It does not mean that society doesn’t exist at all.
A society for the mutual benefit of all individuals clearly does not mean that social institutions or collective identities fail to have meaning for those individuals or are otherwise unimportant.
In fact, I would go further by saying that they are of the utmost importance for preserving a peaceful community spirit and preventing the urge for institutionalised plunder.
One final sense in which legality differs from morality:
Suppose that your person or property has been subjected to aggression by another individual. Legally, you may enforce your rights by seeking some combination of self-defence, restitution or punishment, as appropriate.
However, the fact that you may legally enforce your rights on the one hand doesn’t mean, on the other, that you should choose to do so it in a particular situation – especially if said enforcement would disrupt wider social co-operation.
For instance, if a starving old lady pinches your loaf of bread, she has clearly stolen from you. However, the fact that you may demand restitution or even punishment for that theft doesn’t mean it is a good thing for you to do so, given the personal circumstances of the old lady.
I mention this only because too many discussions of apparent legal dilemmas seek answers in the content of legal rights – purely a matter between individuals – rather than looking to the ethics of enforcement, which has wider sociological ramifications.
Truth No. 4: State Rule is NOT Sustained by Force
Every committed libertarian has to deal with a whole raft of questions designed to cast doubt over the “practicality” of vanquishing state rule, such as:
“How would law and order work in a free society?”
“How will the poor be cared for in a free society?”
“Wouldn’t there be chaos without enforced rule?”
The implication of these questions is that law and order, care for the poor, and an absence of chaos cannot be sustained (or are otherwise unworkable) in a society devoid of some “overarching” mechanism of force and control.
Accepting this premise, the standard libertarian answer is to point out the mechanics of how private law enforcement agencies or voluntary charity will operate, together with indicating how civic institutions will serve to keep the peace.
While most of these points are cogent, they concede a false assumption: the notion that, because states use force to accomplish their ends, force is also the mechanism by which states sustain their rule.
In other words, the only reason the state can pass laws, keep order and help the poor is because the state has guns pointed at all of our heads, and will use them if we fail to comply.
The truth, however, is that all social orders – right from the most laissez-faire of small governments all the way up to brutal dictatorships – are, in the main, held together not by force but by voluntary co-operation. There is no way in which a state can operate as some kind of armed “referee” with the ability to act utterly independently of the hearts and minds of its either its participants or its subjects.
Indeed, for the state to operate at all, there must be a very high degree of active and willing co-operation between its political leaders, military, law enforcement, industry leaders, opinion makers and other “elites”.
That highly active form of voluntary co-operation must then be accompanied by – at minimum – passive non-resistance from the majority of the rest of the population.
Actual force, on the other hand, can only ever be exercised against a relative minority of dissenters.
The fear of force can certainly help to achieve the quintessential ingredient of mass non-resistance for a time. However, social orders based on fear tend to have relatively short lifespans.
In the long run, sustained non-resistance to a social order based on state rule can come about only if a majority of the population believes the government in question to be legitimate – even if such a belief is only grudging.
Should that perception of legitimacy be lost, then active refusal to co-operate by just a significant minority is often sufficient to bring down a regime in under a day – especially if that minority is a critical faction upon which the state relies, such as the army or the press.
Indeed, the fact that the state must win hearts and minds if it is to continue its rule is made plain by the fact that states invest so much effort in disseminating propaganda.
The greatest legitimising element of the modern state is, of course, democracy – the notion that “the people” have “chosen” their rulers, and, hence, the exercise of power by the latter is justified.
As we mentioned, oceans of ink have been spilled in arguing about how things would “work” in a free society – the three questions listed earlier representing a small part.
But if both free and statist societies are fundamentally sustained by voluntary co-operation, then there is actually very little “practical” difference between how institutions are able to accomplish their ends in either kind of social order. It all boils down to what people are willing to support.
Take, for instance, law and order.
The only reason the state’s police and judicial system can arrest people, try them, and lock them up is because the majority of people choose not to interfere with these operations.
A significant subset of that majority will be motivated by the belief that these are legitimate institutions carrying out legitimate functions, and will actively assist in police investigations by reporting on criminal behaviour, furnishing evidence or testifying as witnesses.
If those people continue their support even when the police are, in fact, violating people’s liberty, (e.g. for breach of some arbitrary law), then that is how the state is able to get away with using force to accomplish its objectives.
However, should that same majority lend their support not to the state but to a private law enforcement operation, then the effect would be the same. The private enforcement agency could deal with criminals and aberrations – always a tiny minority in the grand scheme of things – swiftly and easily if everyone else stands aside.
The only difference in a free society would be that the public would withdraw their support if the law enforcement agency targeted not genuine criminals but began initiating acts of violence against innocent people.
Let’s turn now to the question of caring for the poor.
One must remember that – however impoverished a given individual may be – the wherewithal to take care of that person’s needs cannot be conjured out of thin air. Rather, it must come from the productive energies of all people who are able to work. The only question is the method of transfer.
Libertarians (rightly) point out that voluntary charity should be this vehicle.
Statists reply that such charity is “insufficient” and that only the state can “guarantee” enough welfare provision to the needy.
These statists assume, however, that their mere assertion of this “guarantee” is sufficient to bring it about – that declaring out loud “the state will take care of the poor” somehow makes it a reality.
However, transferring a portion of the produced wealth to the state doesn’t directly bring a shred of welfare closer to any particular poor person.
The specific individuals populating the state still have to choose to make further transfers to the poor. And there is no guarantee that they will select any one person’s affliction as being in need of their attention – especially not when you consider the fact that practically everyone else will be eager to dip their snouts in the public trough.
In short, the poor always have to beg someone to make a voluntary choice to help them. Socialising welfare simply makes that someone the government.
Further, the state’s room for maneuverer in this regard is ultimately curtailed by how much redistribution the majority of taxpayers are willing to endure.
The only reason that the state can indulge in wealth transfers is because a majority of the people either agree with them or otherwise tolerate them. If such tolerance was to be withdrawn, then it’s entirely conceivable that there would be minimal or even no welfare at all, in spite of continued state rule.
Moreover, given that the poor are actually the least influential upon the government, the majority of wealth distribution is more likely to flow upwards to the already well off, whose powerful positions have the ear of government officials. Indeed, “corporate welfare” is one of the most insidious aspects of modern Western political systems.
Earlier we said that state control over person and property cannot guarantee moral behaviour; all you can do is change who gets to behave as a moral agent.
When addressing the question of poverty, fairness, equality, etc., we see exactly the same roadblock: no “system” can guarantee the ends to which resources will be directed. The only thing you can do is change who gets to determine the allocation.
Indeed, how often are we told that “capitalism creates inequality”, and that only government control can make people “more equal”?
Leaving aside the fact that perfect equality is an anti-human, impossible goal, the power to make everyone at least somewhat more equal is already in the possession of everyone in a free market. Every single individual could change his/her spending patterns in order to channel more resources to the less well off.
In other words, instead of spending money with the richest, most established merchants and vendors who offer the best quality products, each of us could, instead, choose to patronise less able, more expensive suppliers to lend them “equality of opportunity”.
But the fact that people don’t do this simply shows that they do not value creating greater equality ahead of other goals. Critics of this choice blame it on “the system”, whereas they are really seeking to override what other people truly value.
And yet, transferring people’s resources to the government also fails to guarantee their cherished equality. The officials in the government still then have to choose to distribute that wealth equally. Which, empirically, they never have.
Let us turn now to the question of the state’s role in preventing chaos more generally:
One of the little stock retorts that critics of libertarianism like to whip out of their playbook in this regard is to ask, “What about Somalia?” In other words, if life without a state is so brilliant, then why is Somalia not a paradise of freedom?
The assumption here is that whatever chaos and civil strife reigns in Somalia does so because there is no unitary state in that territory. In other words, as soon as you kiss goodbye to the state, all hell breaks loose.
(For the sake of argument, I am conceding that such chaos is, in fact, the situation in Somalia. Readers more knowledgeable about the country may disagree.)
But if the sustenance of state rule is dependent upon voluntary co-operation, then the causal relationship is precisely backwards: it is the state that depends upon an absence of chaos, not vice versa.
Like any other social order, the state thrives only when there is a high degree of voluntary agreement about how it should function and who should lead it.
Chaos and disorder are the result when that agreement breaks down, not because a system has “failed” in and of itself. In such a case, society either descends into general lawlessness, or various power factions battle it out to ennoble themselves as rulers over the territory in question.
Truth No. 5: Society is not an “Organisation”
A related fallacy to that outlined in the previous section is the notion that – without a state – society is “disorganised” or lacking in governance.
One problem with this assertion is that society as a whole is neither an organisation nor a governed institution. Rather – as we mentioned earlier – it is the sum total of social co-operation between individuals. In other words, it refers to the entire collection of organisations and institutions in existence.
Within the whole of society, people are quite capable of forming organisations where it is beneficial for them to do so – e.g. families, businesses, universities, charities, clubs, congregations, and so on – all of which have leaders, hierarchies and mechanisms of internal governance.
Such organisations are not, however, ends in themselves; they are vehicles that facilitate achieving the needs of their members, and – as such – have an optimal size and extent for fulfilling that purpose. Organising beyond that desired extent would either end up frustrating the purpose and/or including people whose needs are not helped by joining the institution. In the latter case, organisations become predatory.
Moreover, absence of “overarching”, directed organisation doesn’t entail disorder. When dealing at arm’s length, voluntary trade is the primary vehicle of interaction between independent individuals and organisations. The science of economics demonstrates conclusively how the pricing, profit and loss system achieves wider societal co-ordination in that instance.
In fact, the case may be stated more strongly: the flow of resources across society as a whole can only be orderly without any attempt to enforce control over it.
The absence of the state, therefore, doesn’t mean an absence of organisation – merely that such organisation is voluntary.
The state, however, is imposed organisation of an essentially arbitrary extent and size.
Indeed, the notion that the state is “necessary” for societal “organisation” can be disposed of by pointing out the fact that, not only do state borders change throughout history, but “stable” states can be as small as Monaco or as vast as China. If state organisation is a prerequisite for social stability, why can the size of organisation necessary to achieve this vary so wildly?
Truth No. 6: Only a Rejuvenation of Moral Fervour Can Restore Liberty
All in all, whichever social order is sustained has very little to do directly with the precise nature of any particular political “system”.
Rather, it is ultimately dependent on what the majority of people want (or, at least, are willing to put up with).
True enough, social orders can benefit from reinforcing mechanisms that serve to preserve the existing state of affairs.
The very fact, for instance, that the First and Second Amendments to the US Constitution were etched into parchment furnishes a sufficient number of people with ongoing motivation to uphold them.
Nor should one underestimate the power of inertia in cementing the status quo.
Ultimately, however, there is no magical system, no silver bullet that will “guarantee” the installation and preservation of any social order if it is vastly at odds with the ideas and values of the majority.
And given that the majority of people are opinion receivers rather than opinion formers, the real reason for a relative waning of liberty in today’s world has nothing to do with “practicality” but is, in the end, something far more inane:
That the opinion forming classes – intellectuals, journalists, etc. – no longer have any faith in liberty but have oodles of faith in the power of the state. And that faith trickles down to the masses.
Indeed, even those who reject the current leftist onslaught are still basically in favour of the state in principle, maintaining fervent devotion to democracy. They think that, so long as we elect the “right” leaders, everything will be OK.
But you cannot elect the “right” leaders, expecting peace and prosperity, when the institution they will lead is fundamentally based on force and violence.
The only true way forward for restoring such a peaceful world is for opinion-forming classes to regain a passion for justice and basic ethics before disseminating that passion to the masses:
That it is wrong to murder people in any circumstance, and regardless of who you are.
That it is wrong to assault people in any circumstance, and regardless of who you are.
That it is wrong to steal from people in any circumstance, regardless of who you are.
The quest for prosperity, social stability, cultural vibrancy must start with recognition of these truths, coupled with an uncompromising rejection of the state’s violation of the same.
Nothing else will do.
NOTES
[1] Murray N Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, Scholars’ Edition, Ludwig von Mises Institute (2009), 1319 [emphasis added].
