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The Contradiction in Anarchism
by Robert J. Bidinotto (Bidinotto@compuserve.com)
Copyright (C) 1994, Robert J. Bidinotto, All Rights Reserved
Excerpts:
What anarchists omit from their basic premises is a simple fact: conflicting philosophies will lead to conflicting interpretations of the meaning of such basic terms as "aggression," "self- defense," "property," "rights," "justice," and "liberty." Deducing away, syllogism after syllogism, from these mere words does not mean that the people employing them agree on their meaning, justification or implementation.
After all, would you hire an agency that couldn't adequately protect your own interpretation of your rights? Consider the justly-maligned profession of defense attorneys. They'll defend any client for a buck, using any argument, any tactic to boost their chances of winning, truth be damned. (When people today say, "I need a good lawyer," do they mean "I need a pillar of integrity" -- or do they mean instead: "I need a guy who can win for me"?) Would anyone argue that it is merely the fact of "government courts" that make these shysters possible? Don't you suppose that they would find similar employment in a totally privatized system, in which the "sovereign consumer" reigns?
Then why limit such amoral, anything-to-win behavior only to attorneys? Isn't it reasonable to assume the same motives would govern at least a significant portion of "protective agents"?
Today, a "legal monopoly" exists to put shady private detectives and private extortionists behind bars. It serves as a final arbiter on the use of force in society. We all agree it does a less-than-exemplary job much of the time; but it's there. What happens when it isn't? Or worse: when the shady detective or extortionist has replaced it, in a marketplace where profits depend on satisfying the subjective desires of emotional clients?
Anarchists say this scenario is unrealistically pessimistic: it assumes people are going to want to do the wrong thing. In fact, people "naturally" seek their rational self-interest, they declare, once government is out of the way. They would try to cooperate, work things out.
Well, if they did, why would they need any agency -- governmental or private? Why wouldn't five billion people naturally cooperate on this planet without any legal or institutional framework to resolve disputes?
Under anarcho-capitalism, "the public" is called "the market," and "votes with its dollars" to have its way about the use of force in society. In a political system (i.e., under a "monopolistic government"), "the public" is called a "political constituency," and votes with ballots in order to have its way about the use of force in society.
But in the latter case, if the government has been constitutionally limited, the masses are typically thwarted in having their way at the expense of others. They can't use force to do anything they want. As private criminals, their acts are limited by the government. And government agents themselves are limited by the Constitution. Our Founders were geniuses at limiting power. It's taken lovers of coercion over 200 years to subvert our Founder's system to its current state; and still, our system is far from being totalitarian.
In the market, by contrast, what's to stop thugs, and by what standard? Surely no private company would deliberately handcuff itself, with separations and divisions of powers, and checks and balances. Such silly, inefficient "gridlock" and "red tape" would only make it less competitive. No, a competitive company must be flexible to respond to shifting "market demand." That means the demand for whatever consumers may want, anything at all. It can't tie its own hands by limiting itself. After all, some other company or industry would always be willing to operate without such moral self-limitation. What firm would restrain itself, when the sleazy, unscrupulous Acme Protective Service across town is just itching for the same customer contracts, and willing to promise clients "no limits?"
Anarchists proclaim faith that in the marketplace, all the "protection" companies would rationally work everything out. All companies in the private sector, they assert, have a vested interest in peace. Their reputations and profits, you see, rest on the need for mutual cooperation, not violence.
Oh? What about a reputation for customer satisfaction -- and the profits that go with getting results? I guess anarchists have no experience in the private sector with shyster lawyers, protection rackets, software pirates and the like. Aren't they, too, responding to market demand?
If the "demand" for peace is paramount, please explain the bloody history of the world.
Anarcho-capitalists forget their own Austrian economics. It was Von Mises who described the marketplace as the ultimate democracy, where "sovereign consumers voted with their dollars" to fulfill their desires. Not necessarily good desires, mind you: just "desires." Whatever they happened to be. The market was itself amoral: it simply satisfied the desires of the greatest number. (That's why Howard Stern sells better than Isaac Stern.)
In other words, the market, like water, can't rise higher than its source. And its source is the people -- the same people who vote in a representative political system. The marketplace is no more moral than the people who are "voting with their dollars." If there's a demand, some supplier will always come along to fill it -- a demand for anything from chocolates to child prostitutes. What "market mechanism" would arise to distinguish between the two -- and by what right and standard would it enforce such distinctions?
Even if 99 percent of "protection agents" behave rationally, all you'd need is one "secessionist" outlaw agency, with it's own novel interpretation of "rights" and "justice," tailored to appeal to some "customer base" of bigots, religious fanatics, disgruntled blue collar workers or amoral tycoons with money to burn. Do anarchists care to argue that outlaw agencies -- given our current intellectual and philosophical "marketplace" -- would have no such constituencies? Dream on.
Oops -- did I say "outlaw?" Under anarchy, there is no final determiner of the law." There would be no final standard for settling disputes, e. g., a Constitution. That would be a "monopoly legal system," you see. That's because anarchists support the unilateral right of any individual or group to secede from a governing framework. (After all -- wrote anarchist Lysander Spooner a century ago -- I didn't sign the Constitution, did I?)
So whose laws, rules, definitions and interpretations are going to be final?
The answer to unlimited government is not the "unlimited democracy" of the Misesian marketplace. Mises knew better (read his Bureaucracy). But anarchist rationalists, like Rothbard, haven't yet figured out that "force" is not just like any other good or service on the marketplace.
Put another way: the anarcho-capitalist position amounts to the demand that one's own use of force be immune from the moral evaluation and response of others. It is a demand for the right to secede from the judgments of other people concerning the validity of one's own use of force. It is a denial that there is a basic need to subject any use of force to objective -- that is, socially demonstrable -- standards.
No, force isn't like any other "good": by its nature, it poses unique hazards to the lives, rights and well-being of the innocent. When someone uses force against another, it's rarely self-evident who is the victim, and who the victimizer -- who is attacking, and who is defending. Yet maintaining a functioning society requires that the rest of us determine who is at fault, so that our rights will be protected and justice maintained. Thus, force always must be subject to outside constraint -- and its use must be subjected to an impartial, objective, ex post facto process of social judgment. That's the purpose of laws, courts and public trials, i.e., of government.
The basic premise of anarcho-capitalism is false. There is no such thing as the "right" to employ force unilaterally -- then to remain immune from the requirement to publicly, objectively justify that use of force. No such right exists. So it is no "violation of rights" to require individuals to submit to an objective process to justify, publicly, their uses of force -- i.e., to submit to governmental authority.
3. Finally, the Constitution is not any sort of "contract" requiring anyone's signature -- because it's binding, not on the people, but on the government itself. It wasn't established to limit the people; it was established to limit government. It is a document setting up a system by which individual rights will be protected, even from government itself.
The whole point of a single, constitutionally limited government is to limit force and coercion -- by private parties, and by the government itself. Ayn Rand argued that government was a means of subjecting might to morality. That's not a mere social luxury; it's a basic requirement of human survival.
In any society, human life and well-being mandates that there be a set of objective procedures to distinguish aggression from self-defense, and some way of imposing the final verdicts upon both victimizers and victims. It would be impossible for individuals to pursue self- interest within a social context if such determinations were never made -- or made arbitrarily -- or never enforced.
Hence the problem with the rationalistic argument for anarcho- capitalism begins with its opening premises: with the definitions of terms such as "force," "coercion," "rights," "liberty," "aggressor," "protection," "retaliation," "defense," etc. Anarchists simply deduce away from these concepts, which remain as floating abstractions in everyone's minds. We all think we mean the same things by them. But the contextual consideration omitted by the anarchists is that each of these terms acquires different meanings depending on the philosophy of the interpreter. And at last count, there are about 5.5 billion interpreters on our planet.
Summary:
The fundamental moral rationale for anarchism is that government inherently entails aggression (the initiation of force), while anarchism does not. On this contention, the anarchists’ entire theoretical case against government hinges.
Specifically, their moral claims are that (1) government must compel involuntary taxation to sustain its activities, (2) government initiates force and coercion to outlaw "competing" protection agencies and legal systems, and (3) anarcho-capitalism avoids both moral problems.
Here, very briefly, are my summary replies:
(1) There is no inherent reason why a government that’s limited only to bare-bones justice functions will require taxation to exist. The necessary services of a proper government – police, laws, courts, even defense – could be funded voluntarily, generally on a fee-for-service basis, along with (but not limited to) such supplemental non-coercive mechanisms as lotteries, special fund-raisers, and employment of volunteers.
(2) Governments do not need to outlaw "private protection agencies" – and in actuality, they don’t. We already have an abundance of private detectives, bounty hunters, security police, mediators, arbitrators, bodyguards, private prisons, etc., all operating legally and in parallel to the governmental system.
However, government does require that all such individuals and agencies conform to, and operate within, a single, overarching framework of law. Why? Because you can’t allow "market competition" over the very definitions and meanings of such basic legal principles as "justice," "rights," "aggression," "self-defense," etc.
You can’t have a viable, peaceful society with each competing individual, demographic group, street gang, religious faction, et al., deciding, unilaterally and subjectively, who is a "victim" and who a "criminal" – then claiming the "sovereign right" to ignore the contrary legal claims, rules, definitions, principles, and verdicts of everyone else.
And that brings us to...
(3) Contrary to its supporters, anarcho-capitalism embodies an inherent moral and logical contradiction.
Most of the saner anarchist theorists contend that a "just" agency (or even an innocent victim) has the right to forcibly respond to an "aggressor." But in the marketplace, which is governed solely by profit incentives, who will define who is the "aggressor" and who the "victim"? Which "private defense agency" has the final authority to enforce its definitions against those used by other competing agencies – or against individual "hold outs" who disagree – or against all those who proclaim a "sovereign right" to "secede" from that agency’s determination?
When push comes to shove – as it often will, anarcho-fantasies to the contrary notwithstanding – the "private defense agency" faces a basic choice. Either (a) it uses coercion to enforce its verdict upon the "hold out" (or upon "competing agencies"), or (b) it fails to enforce its verdicts.
If (a), then the "private defense agency" is coercively "eliminating the competition" – that is, it's behaving as a "legal monopoly on force," in exactly the same way that anarchists find morally intolerable when a government is doing it. In that case, the argument for the moral superiority (let alone moral purity) of anarchism’s "private defense agency" collapses.
If (b), however, then the agency’s pronouncements are toothless and impotent. In that case, all that anyone need do to evade the private agency’s criminal laws, verdicts, and sentences, is simply to ignore them.
Since many anarchists have tried gamely to ignore this key point, let me make it harder for them by repeating it.
Folks, it’s really either/or. Either "private defense agencies" enforce their laws, or they don’t.
If they do enforce their laws, then (by anarcho-definitions) they're "coercively" imposing their private legal systems on their competitors. And there goes their claim to morality.
But if they don't enforce their laws, then criminals will remain free to prey with impunity upon innocent individuals. And there goes the neighborhood.
Anarchists simply cannot tap dance around this dilemma by such subterfuges and dodges as claiming, "Oh, but governments would be far worse than private agencies" – or "Historically, limited governments never remain ‘limited’."
Again, the moral case for anarchism is not that it is less bad than government, or that governments historically have not acted properly. The core anarchist claim is that anarchism is inherently non-aggressive, while government is inherently aggressive.
But both aspects of this claim are utterly and completely false.
There is nothing "immoral" or "aggressive" about an institution having the final authority to render and enforce just verdicts, according to objective procedures and rules of evidence. The fact that verdicts – by their very nature as final legal decisions – must be enforced against "outlaws," is not aggression, but defense: the organized social defense of the rights of innocent individuals against their victimizers. And the fact that final enforcement of legally rendered verdicts necessarily precludes further "competition," or "secession" by dissenters, is not aggression, either: it’s simply recognition of reality.
After all, an unenforced rule is not a law, but merely a suggestion.
Experience tells us that criminals do not respond to mere suggestions.
And experience also tells us (at least those of us not mired in rationalistic theorizing) that to protect individual rights, society needs a single agency that retains the ultimate, final power to enforce justice for all.
Bob’s answers to some internet critics:
>>Yes, retaliatory and defensive force - enforcement of rights against their violation - is legitimate force. So you accept that government is not an agreement, that government is not law, government is a monopoly on legitimate force within a geographic area?
Government is all of these things.
So then a sole manufacturer by virtue of efficiency and price is not a monopoly.
>>That's right.
You can not be correct in this. If a company or individual is the sole provider of something, it must by definition be a monopoly. In this case it is a monopoly by virtue, which is why a distinction between coercive and non-coercive monopolies was required.
:>>To avoid this complaint - if he accepts the definition of government as it is usually used at least in the English language and in discourse on the matter - aynfan would have to show how the government somehow have the right to forbid competition (which is what Nozick tried to do).
I repeat, if a government is not coercive why would there be a need for competition, unless you were a statist who hated the "weakness" of non-coercive government?
>>Because legitimate force can be provided in a variety of different ways, and I might prefer one way to another.
I have never quarreled with that. Hire your own bodyguards, who cares. But if a murder slipped by your bodyguards, and the ‘government’ police just happen by and saved you, I do not think you would complain.
>>The point is that the government has no rational way to make these allocations.
Government as it is presently constituted.
>>The situation would be different if police services were supplied on a free, competitive market. In that case, consumers would pay for whatever degree of protection they wish to purchase.
Government does not have to disappear for this to happen.
>>. A drive for efficiency would be insured, as it always is on the market, by the compulsion to make profits and avoid losses, and thereby to keep costs low and to serve the highest demands of the consumers. Any police firm that suffers from gross inefficiency would soon go bankrupt and disappear.
It is not inefficiencies that one should fear. One should to be concerned about methods, the quality of the laws that these agencies enforce. If they can create their own law codes, it would be at least chaotic and at worse a loss of liberty. Would you allow police firms the freedom to enforce any set of rules that suited them? If you would, you will have, for example, police protection agencies owned or heavily funded by pederasts which can protect them from punishment as they bugger little boys. They are many other examples I could cite.
>>Competition ensures that resources in the industry are allocated to where they are most needed, ensures that resources aren't wasted, ensures that customers wanting legitimate force get value for money, and ensures that customers get the style of protection they prefer.
You have made this point many times, but you advocate for it in a vacuum, without any thought to implementation. First you object to licensing, so anyone with any degree of experience or lack of it can be a protection agency; all they need is the start up capital.
Second, would you not want licensed Doctors? Who would license them? A private agency is your answer. Which private agency, and how could they earn a living doing it? The first person or investigative reporter who purchased the information would disseminate it. It would be available in the public library, no profit there. The only people who could make a living promoting such a licensing agency would be doctors themselves. They would probably form a guild that would put a stamp of approval on physicians, and exclude those doctors who chose not to pay their ‘dues’. The guild would, of course, be coercive, a closed shop, just as labor unions are. Some doctors would resist and you would have unlicensed Doctors practicing, especially among the poor, at a reduced rate, but you would have no measure of their competence. By virtue of their poverty the poor would be disadvantaged, and don’t kid yourself "the poor will always be with us". Under a moral government, voluntarily financed, the poor would be virtually exempt from paying, but would still benefit from the armed forces, the police and civil courts. These benefits would be a gift to men of lesser economic ability from those of greater ability without any sacrifice on the part of the latter.
As to voting "with your dollars", why can’t you see that same people who vote in a representative political system would be the ones voting with their dollars. They would be no better or worse than the idiots who vote now. To paraphrase Bidinotto, if there's a demand for anything from chocolates to child prostitutes some supplier will always come along to fill it. What "market mechanism" would arise to distinguish between the two -- and by what right and standard would it enforce such distinctions? You are opening a door to agencies with their own interpretation of "rights" and "justice," who will tailor their services to appeal to baser instincts. They would seek out and become rich with a customer base of bigots, religious fanatics, disgruntled blue-collar workers or amoral tycoons with money to burn and a yen for sexual murder.
Do anarchists care to argue that agencies like this would have no constituencies?
>>I didn't say "government must be bad or it isn't can't be government," did I? I said that a "natural monopoly" in the provision of legitimate force "would still not be a legitimate government, since it would not command the allegiance of, nor have the right to rule over, anybody that did not buy its protection services."
Why would it not be a government? I know today’s governments are awful examples, but even today people go underground to avoid taxes. They work only for cash, and stay under government’s radar, and yet government is not any less government. Under a moral government that did not collect taxes, the government would have no interest in individuals as long as they did not commit violent acts.
>>If you think this is "the usual crap," then perhaps you can explain why? Perhaps you can explain why somebody who doesn't want anybody to protect him
I do want protection; it is the only legitimate function of government. If you want a different kind of protection from a private agency, so be it. But there has to be one universal set of rules, an even playing field. Private agencies can not be allowed to legislate, i.e., invent their own set of laws for the many reasons cited above.
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