Why Anarchists are Right!
One of the primary misconceptions people have when they think of Anarchism is they think of the popular use of the term anarchy. Which refers to a state of chaos. For our purposes here, Anarchism is not advocacy for chaos but is a political philosophy that believes human flourishing and peace can be best created in a stateless society where human being self organize according to voluntary association.
Natural Rights
The appeal and foundation of this worldview centers on a couple simple notions about natural rights. First, the notion of self ownership- the idea that other people don’t have a right to your body or your property. Then, flowing from self ownership, comes the non aggression principle which concludes that no one has the right to initiate violence against another person or their property. These ideas constitute the basis of what many now call the “Philosophy of Liberty” and this philosophy was central to American thinkers in justifying their revolution against the British state.
However, in its most basic form these ideas are summed up in the simple request to “Leave me alone and don’t take my stuff”. We all have been taught these principles since we were children and accept it as morally axiomatic. Yet if we take a moment to think about it we carve out gaping exceptions for “the state”.
What Is The State?
People overcomplicate what “The State” actually is. For all the pomp and circumstance the state is merely an entity that has a monopoly on the use of violence (or the threat of it) to enforce rules over a particular geographical region. In its essence the state is a group of guys with guns there to enforce the rules. In modern systems like the US, legislatures make the rules, courts interpret the rules and executive agencies enforce those rules via violence or the threat of it. If you wish to reside in a particular geographic region you must obey these rules or face the violence of the state.
Just think about it. A law is not needed if people naturally will behave in a certain way (hence why there is no law that forces you to go pick up your paycheck). So how does the state get people to behave in a way they would not ordinarily? By imposing punishments backed up ultimately by violence. Every law exists to modify human behavior through the threat of violence from the state if the law is not obeyed. And yes I do mean violence ultimately. Don’t believe me? Next time you break a law and are fined, continue to refuse paying those fines and see how long it takes until a guy with guns shows up and then refuse to comply with their orders.
At this point you might be thinking what James Madison said “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary”. However, we must content the realities of human nature and thus the state is needed in some limited form. Libertarianism is largely based around this idea while Anarchists (more specifically anarcho capitalists) posit that all the essential functions of the state can be privatized which we will explore in a future essay. However, what we should consider is why we allow the state to do things that we never would do ourselves.
What Makes The State So Special?
Does an immoral act become moral simply because a majority or someone with a special badge is doing it? If I go around and ask for donations to the poor that is very different from going around demanding you give me money for the poor at the point of a gun while threatening to throw you in a cage in my basement if you don’t comply. If I ask that you don’t smoke a particular kind of plant that I think is unhealthy, that is quite different from if I show up at your house with a gun and demand you stop under the threat of me taking your property (in the form of money) if you don’t comply. Why is it that we think that outsourcing an immoral act to the state suddenly makes that action morally justifiable? Yet that is what we see happening every day.
Let’s explore taxation. Some laugh at the libertarian mantra that “taxation is theft”, but they normally laugh because they have no good rebuttal. Theft is the taking of another persons property without their consent. Taxation is the taking of someones property without their consent. Now some may try to argue that most people consent to taxation as a civic duty. However, if most people consented then why have laws to enforce payment of taxes. After all, wouldn’t people pay if the government simply asked for donations and said it was a civic duty? Others will appeal to the notion of a “social contract” and your responsibility to help pay your fair share as per the terms of that social contract. However, this argument fails as pointed out by many anarchist thinkers because a contract must include actual voluntary consent (like a signature) without the threat of coercion. There is no actual contract that you agreed to and you have no reasonable “opt-out” option for that “contract” if you don’t like the services. In essence, it is not a contract at all.
Another argument is from the idea that your property is not really entirely yours but that the state helped create your property by providing the public goods that were needed (security, roads etc) and thus are entitled to a portion of that property. The first problem is that the state only was able to provide you with those things by taking property from others by force and coercion. Another, is the fact that you did not voluntarily ask for those services. This puts you in the same position as someone who is being extorted by a mafia protection racket. The implication is that you don’t really own anything and everything belongs to the state. Is this really the world we want to live in? Are you really free if you live in a society where anything you produce is owned by someone else simply because they will use violence against you if you don’t pay for services you never asked for? Perhaps those services are very useful and did help you produce your wealth. This still does not remove the moral need for consent to those services or the moral need for an “opt out” ability if we feel the provider is doing a bad job or charging too much.
So why not just leave?
Some also may claim that by remaining where you are and not leaving that you have consented to the rules of that area. However, if your nieghbor comes and dumps trash on your lawn have you consented because you don’t leave your house? Are you consenting to the mafias protection racket just because you don’t leave? Why are you obligated to leave instead of the people doing the extortion?
Justice Is Not Determined By The Majority
In most modern democratic systems people seem to assume that the government gains its authority by the consent of the governed and that legitimizes government action. However, just because 19 of 20 people vote to take a persons property does not make it any different than theft. Nor does a majority decision of a larger group make the initiation of violence against Jews justified. To a reasonable person the morality of an action is not determined by a majority.
A morally sane individual believes slavery was wrong even if the majority of people did not think so and codified it in law. The bottom line is that the authority of the state as granted by the people freely is a myth. The true source of a political bodies authority is rooted in its monopoly on the unpunished initiation of violence in a given region. In other words at its core this authority is not granted voluntarily by the people it is authority taken by coercion and violence. We obey the state because we fear what it might do to us. When this is fully comprehended a reasonable and moral person is obligated to see the state at most as a necessary evil. But the anarchist goes a step further and says that evil is not necessary and human flourishing is possible in a system without a cadre of people with a monopoly on unprintable initiation of violence which will be the subject of part 2 of this essay.
