Order Without Law
Where Will Anarchists Keep the Madmen? by john sneed
it’s a paper republished at LRC (LewRockwell.com) today, and this is a rambling brainstorm of things i’ve been mulling, with criticisms of that paper, anarchy, and some libertarian notions. argument is invited. i’ll probably come back and tighten now and then, because i’m afraid i wasn’t able to quite nail the main point (anarchy must always devolve into a state) as i set out to.
[if you're not familiar with LRC, this shouldn't be construed as a criticism of the site. one of the best things about lew rockwell is that you can never assume he agrees with what he publishes. having said that, lew is strongly dedicated to anarchism as a goal, though i suspect it's more in the manner i outline below. how do i know this? well, he's damned smart, so it follows that he would agree with me. bwahahahaha!]
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i’m continually disappointed by the utopian aspects of those who seriously propose anarchy with a bunch of “this would work like this, and that would work like that.” the article was written in 1977, but even in that context it sounds horribly naive to me, as does most anarchist talk.
logically, anarchy is impossible. this is something i wish more people would address. as a free-market dude, i admire anarchism. it’s worthy, admirable, blah blah blah. it just won’t work. and worse, those who value freedom often ignore an uncomfortable problem: the state, as it exists today, is exactly what an anarchist society would look like given enough time.
it’s good that john sneed states clearly that there are many ways things would work in an “anarchist” society, but he borders on that baffling tendency of those who give lip service to austrian economics yet can’t just come out and say, “i have no idea, and to even propose how anarchy would work is silly. freedom is the key.” no, there’s no harm in throwing around some ideas, but some of those ideas get turned into the worst sort of methods — those that have never been tried, and very likely would end up as most human plans: completely different (i.e., something else).
most anarchist twaddle is built on the premise that the author will someday be handed a clean slate. where? on what planet? the constant assumption is laughable. seasteading might come close to that, but that’s only the first hurdle. anarchists would be better off advocating freedom (not systems) above all, and ending the utopian theorizing that does nothing but prevent moving toward anarchy. same with many austrian economists. freedom is what they’re fighting for, but sometimes you’d never know it amid all the combative arguments for why some political policy isn’t to be preferred. it’s deficient because it’s coercive. next! way too much particular theorizing.
have been meaning to write something up on this for a couple of years:
though it’s happening less as the tyrannical heart of most home owner associations (people) is getting publicity, HOAs used to be held up as mildly good examples of a fake start to anarchistic communities; go in, sign a contract, and deal with whatever level of invasion you find suitable. and it does sound like it’s headed in a good direction, despite that uber-HOA: the state. but it started to hit me that i couldn’t find a core difference between established HOAs and an established state, other than the method of the original invasion (one coercive, the other voluntary). big difference, yes, but the problem was in the following generations and in the interpretation of the contract. (i.e., constitution. gulp.)
after you’re 4 or 5 generations down from the original signer of the contract, all sorts of statist fuzziness enters the picture. in a pristine world, property can reasonably (i suppose) be bound forever to some agreement that passes through owners with the property. and i don’t want to mix up horrendously open-ended contracts with communities that perhaps aren’t so bad. but after time and human nature take their toll, it seems to me that many of the HOAs (for understandable reasons) end up being more truly tyrannical and aggressive than the state, albeit often with state complicity.
and so i come to the only difference i see between my situation in the US and my situation in a mythic HOA contract i didn’t sign but which i must bear because i was born into (inherited) it: one was entered into voluntarily by somebody else, and the other probably not. where does that leave me? i can leave either one, though it’s getting harder to leave the US with one’s property intact, and may, quite soon, become impossible. (coincidentally, if an HOA goes tyrannical, the property within it is likely devalued.)
with that as certain knowledge (in a sorta fuzzy way, admittedly), i then get to the anarchist utopia. we are often pleasured with theories of how defense companies replace the state. in the years i’ve been hoping to buy into anarchism, i’ve not once heard anybody give a halfway believable scenario for what happens when somebody (a murderer, for example), refuses to participate. baffling. it may be viewed by some as obstructionism, but to me it brings up a disturbing conclusion: the state is necessary. it’s even presumed in most descriptions of anarchy: everybody is presumed to have engaged defense insurance services, and there’s usually some happy method to explain why companies would never become warring states. i’m not buying it. if a service is compulsory, then the state, distributed among many companies though it may be, exists. the companies would likely form an alliance to deal with non-participants, and that alliance would be coercive, dictatorial, eventually monopolistic, and here we are all over again. we didn’t get to socialism by accident; it’s man’s natural target, whether he tries for it consciously.
the only thing i’ve heard that comes remotely close to meeting some sort of halfway utopian freedom expectation is mary ruwart’s Healing Our World in an Age of Aggression, and it’s not anarchistic — though i think it should appeal to thinking anarchists more than anarchism does.
i’ve written several hardcore anarchists and asked what is to be done when a murderer refuses to buy defense insurance or do whatever that anarchist’s pet theory requires. haven’t heard an answer yet. and these are some smart, super-detailed people i’ve asked. i think they’re wrong in selling anarchy as a reachable goal, and i hate to say that. i believe there are elements of anarchism that suffer just as much as modern liberalism from pie-in-the-sky bullshit that assumes everybody in the pet society is good. what i think would happen if an anarchist society ever became even close to being founded from scratch by the best of today’s freedom lovers is that the demographics would get smeared; some freedom lovers would become statists as they inevitably seek easy advantage in a society that shuns it. i think you’d see some sinister behavior that would rival the worst of any statist society. and that behavior, in needing to be met, would ultimately drag the entire thing down into the natural state of humanity: socialism — that perverse mix of religion and aggression.
it may be out of vogue for freedom lovers to quote early american statists, but i agree with them on this principle (among others): the only thing that will preserve liberty is force. any proposed anarchy is, in my view, silly. however, any proposed anarchy that doesn’t account for non-anarchists (violent predators) is idiotic.
anarchy will never be achieved on a large scale or for a long time. we should strive for anarchy in all things, with the understanding that it will never come. the state is here to stay. it just doesn’t have to be as it is. and that’s where i do sometimes meet lew rockwell’s amazing optimism. we must wrench liberty out of the hands of the state every chance we get, and use that efficiency to minimize the state. the state isn’t going away. it must be forced into a corner.
August 10th, 2004 at 06:12
You’re probably right. But the state isn’t the solution either, since it too inevitably devolves into tyrannical socialism, as evidenced by the United States. The U.S. Constitution staved off this inevitability for a blessed long time, but that time is over. I guess Thomas Jefferson was correct about periodically refreshing the tree of liberty.
Bottom line from my perspective is that I’m glad I have a limited life time. No matter what happens, I ain’t gonna have to watch it for long.
As for what we do with people who refuse to buy into the insurance scheme, that’s easy. We kill them, in cold blood. In an anarchist society, the only “police” are those that you’ve contracted to protect you. No contract, no protection, and you are easy meat.
Personally, I consider that to be a much better solution than prisons in our current constitutional republic. If you enter someone’s property without his permission, hurt him, or steal his stuff, your life should be forfeit, to your intended victim. It should be up to him whether you walk out or are dragged. Of course this brings up the problem of killing someone and claiming, fraudulently, that he stole your stuff. If he’s in your house, it’s pretty simple. Elsewhere not.
The only real solution to the problem is the recognition that people are mostly good, mostly sheep-like. When the wolves get out of hand, the sheep dogs have to kill them or chase them away, but since there aren’t many wolves, it can be made to work pretty well no matter which system you use. Once the wolf population gets too high, you’re screwed, no matter which system you use.
August 10th, 2004 at 12:03
yep, and i’m afraid much of the anarchist wishing is an attempt to ignore the nasty reality that we’re moving rapidly into the “refresh” zone. the police state is not going to beat itself back.
August 10th, 2004 at 17:27
Charlie,
I do not know if you have read any of Hoppe’s works, but he describes a very realistic system by which all of your concerns with a stateless society (anarchy is really a misnomer here). In The Private Production of Defense, Hoppe develops a very detailed, cogent theory of how people would provide for defense of their property and persons. This is not a lot of “bullshit” as you say. It is very compelling.
As always, however, everything has its problems. Hoppe assumes that most people are more or less rational overall and usually act in their best interest most of the time. But there will always be some who won’t act rationally. Depending on how extremely irrational those people are, it may be necessary to use deadly force to protect yourself or your property. But one can reasonably conclude that most people can be dealt with in a less extreme fashion most of the time.
The present State system handles irrational people in much the same way except that the State has very little incentive to find peaceful solutions to problems because it externalizes all the costs. Regular people and the their defense contractors have to bear the costs of the actions directly. If an employee of a defense company wrongfully kills someone, the company will be sued and they might go out of business and the owners of the company could be ruined financially forever. If the State kills someone wrongfully, most of the time they cover it up or use the courts to exonerate themselves. And in the extrremely rare event that they cannot avoid the blame, they pay off with money stolen from you and me and keep right on going.
So at the end of the day, the State solution is never better that the stateless one. The worst thing that can happen if one really tries a stateless solution is that it breaks down into what we have now. However, what if it works? There is no downside to the attempt and there is a lot of upside. What we have now is horrible and getting worse with each passing year. When will you, Charlie, and those like you who are worried about the worst recognize that we have the worst right now and that trying something else, especially something with as much solid theory behind it like Hoppe’s works, has to be better.
Now I do agree with you that those in power now will not give it up without a fight. Inevitably, there will be a revolution. The State will run itself aground and ther will be a struggle. What comes after that struggle is what we shoudl be interested in. We need to be ready to snatch freedom away from the would be tyrants and be ready to protect it with our lives if necessary. It is the only way for freedom.
August 10th, 2004 at 18:18
i was afraid somebody might skim through what i wrote and construe it as being in favor of the state. that’s too bad, especially in light of my blog. if the anonymous person will come back and tell me what part of my post (exactly) served as the foundation for, “This is not a lot of ‘bullshit’ as you say,” i’d appreciate it. anybody who reads what i wrote and thinks i’m not a fan of anarchism must have watched too much happy-talk news to recognize subtlety any longer. should i write the following in bold 5 times, and make it flash with corny html?
“we should strive for anarchy in all things, with the understanding that it will never come.”
and now i’m happy with the status quo? that’s prick talk.
When will you, Charlie, and those like you who are worried about the worst recognize that we have the worst right now and that trying something else, especially something with as much solid theory behind it like Hoppe’s works, has to be better.have you read my post, let alone my blog? that comment is out of nut land.
re hoppe, i am a big fan of his personally, having met him in auburn this year. i own, have read, and referred extensively to democracy: the god that failed over the years in articles and posts (with more links than i can count), though i disagree with some of it. i am also listed as a patron (using a pseudonym) in the front of the recently released the myth of national defense, which hoppe edited, and which i also own.
not that any of that proves anything, but it might give one enough pause to go back and read what i wrote, not what you wish i’d written. though sloppy, it ain’t that sloppy. your comment portrays me as a defender of the state, and fails to address my unusual (because it’s from an anti-state angle) point that anarchy as its usually fashioned is impossible. sounds to me like you have gancarski disease. i’d love to argue anarchism, but not with somebody who wants to fantasize that i’m opposed to it.
August 13th, 2004 at 15:16
Sorry Charlie, you got it wrong again! :)
I wasn’t trying to potray you as “friend of the state”, believe me. I know very well from reading your blog, that you are no friend of government. I do, however, have a problem with the way you dismiss the case for a stateless society simply because you think it won’t work. Despite having read Hoppe’s works, you still dismiss them without making any challenges to the theory itself. The idea that it won’t work because the powers that be don’t wish it to work is a non-starter. No one expects those in power to step down and hand us back our freedom any more than the colonists expected the King of England to simply order his troops home when the revolution began. When the time is right, freedom will have to wrenched out of the greedy hands that keep it from us. But after that what?
Instead of simply stating that you don’t believe it will work, how about some well reasoned arguments for exactly why you believe it won’t work? How about addressing those aspects of Hoppe’s arguments that you believe are wrong? How about suggesting alternatives thoughts on how to make the theory better? Or even better, author your own theory about how to make everything better.
The very heart of my argument against your position is that what we have is awful and it is getting worse with each passing day. Our illusory freedoms are becoming narrower and narrower and it will not get better. Hoppe makes these same arguments. As you know, he makes a very strong case that we have managed to find the worst possible socio-economic model. The modern super-state is the worst of all possible governments. It is time to start discussing alternatives since, even if they have problems, they have to be better than what we have now and will have in the near future. If you are waiting for someone to give you an alternative that has no problems whatsoever, then you will wait forever. It will not ever happen. The question is or at least should be, are the long-term prospects for liberty better or worse under the proposed solution. The argument of no matter what we do we will end up in the same predicament, so why bother is just intellectually lazy.
We must have a sound, theoretical basis for a better way ready when the time comes. Just as the colonists debated their ideas for what they thought would be a better government in the years leading up to the revolution, we must do the same now. The super-state will collapse in the relatively near future. Those of us who believe that we can build a better society with out the state must begin now to win the intellectual debate. We must convince enough people that our plan is preferable to another failed experiment in Democracy.
You do yoeman’s service in pointing out what is wrong around you. But simply standing on the sidelines and pointing out what is wrong only goes so far. It is time to start advocating a better way. Hoppe and Rockwell have put their theories up for review, where are yours, Charlie?
August 13th, 2004 at 16:13
i think you’re a troll, and until you prove otherwise, i’m going to treat you as one. here’s why:
- while adopting a tone of “stand up and be counted,” you have not identified yourself. it is not a requirement of the blogger comment system that you refrain from typing your name just because you’re not logged in as a blogger user.
- though you approach from the general and ludicrous angle that i have not made my views known on a subject (including proposed solutions in the very post you criticize as not having proposed solutions), you ignored my single and explicit request of you to simply point out in my original post what served as the foundation for your comment implying that i said it’s all bullshit. you couldn’t be bothered. the reason is obvious.
- i suspect, given that you pretend familiarity with my blog, that you are intentionally misspelling my name, even though it’s all over my web site, and also happens to be a prominent hurricane right now. if you’re not intentionally misspelling it, then i make the usual conclusions for those who do what you do.
- you are apparently trying to set up in your latest paragraph that i disagree with rockwell rather than sneed.
address each of those points adequately (in light of my posts, not in light of what you pull from your ass), and i will bother to address every one of yours from your 2 comments above, even though i think you’re an idiot.
i suspect you’re a troll — one who’s not as smart as he thinks, or who’s pretending to be stupid. either way, i don’t want to bother. however, i will if you honestly approach my points above. your choice. or you can do what you’ve done until now, which is ignore my argument and attempt to frame it in your terms. if that’s what you want, have at it; i don’t delete non-vandalism/non-spam comments that are critical of me or this site.
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