By Michael E. Coughlin
The following was originally published in serial form in the dandelion between Summer 1977 and Summer 1979. Back issues of this small magazine can be obtained from the publisher:
Michael E. Coughlin
1985 Selby Avenue
St. Paul, Minnesota 55104
From time to time we will deal with some of the more common objections to anarchism, giving both the criticisms and our answers. Neither critique nor answer can be comprehensive or exhaustive, but they will attempt to outline the problem and suggest an anarchist's approach to answering it. Readers are invited to contribute both critiques and answers.
ANSWER: Philosophers have long speculated on the origins of human social life and political life. Some have pictured the ancient condition of man as one of total chaos where people went about plundering everything and murdering everyone they could find. Only government, they say, brought order and peace to this world of conflict. Others have argued with some force that people joined together basically for economic reasons - it simply was the only practical way to survive. They have further argued that this need for physical survival ultimately brought government into being since people needed an organization to settle their personal disputes and to protect them from rapacious outsiders. Both theories are based on benevolent views of government and they form the basis for many people's idea of what government is today, or at least what they think government should be today.
Neither theory, however, offers an historically realistic appraisal of the origin and nature of government. A third and much more promising theory was advanced by Franz Oppenheimer, who argued that the state is formed from conquest.
It is, however, difficult to determine how men actually lived in "a state of nature" because we have few records of how social life was then organized. Since we can know little of the primeval beginnings of the human race, it is best that we look at man as we see him every day around us.
It takes little discernment to realize that all modern governments are the result not of benevolent policemenship, as many political scientists would like us to believe, but of conquest, of intrigue and power struggles, and of a desire to gain advantage over others through the creation of the state.
Modern governments were not formed by a social contract, not even one remotely resembling Rousseau's ideal. Rather, some of them are the result of revolutions which merely exchanged one set of rulers for another, while others are the children of ancient governments that have passed down the lordship they gained centuries ago through conquest from one generation of political class to another.
Man could not possibly live as a social animal if he lived in a world of universal antagonism. Social life is made possible by our knowledge that most people most of the time are not going to hurt each other or steal from each other. Without that assurance all social life would come to a standstill and there would be no agency or organization of any kind that could bring peace and order out of such a situation.
Man is a social animal and for the most part he will live in cooperative, peaceful relations with his neighbors. It is in this fact of nature, and not some supposed magical power of government, that we discover the essential ingredient for understanding social stability. People by their nature get along with each other. Government doesn't bring them together or keep them together. People live social lives because it is to their advantage to do so. Government doesn't create order out of chaos. The order of social life is already here.
ANSWER: In every age and among all people there will arise some disagreements which will be impossible for the disputants to settle peacefully themselves. This is a fact of nature which no anarchist or any other reasonable person will deny.
Though recognizing that there will be disputes and conflict between some people, we must not make the mistake of assuming that most social relationships will be of this nature. Most dealings between people are peaceful and those that involve some conflict are generally resolved satisfactorily and peacefully by the parties actually involved in the disagreement. Only a few such conflicts must be arbitrated by outside parties.
Any dispute that goes to the point of outside arbitration or settlement involves a conflict which will not be settled to the complete satisfaction of both parties.
As George Barrett explained it in his classic pamphlet Objections to Anarchism: "If there are two persons who want the exclusive right to the same thing, it is quite obvious that there is no satisfactory solution to the problem. It does not matter in the least what system of society you suggest, you cannot possibly satisfy that position."
This is as much a fact of nature as is the reality that some people will sometimes get involved in conflict. To assume, as the objection does, that governmentally imposed verdict will be a "peaceful" and a "just" one acceptable to both parties involved, is an unwarrented assumption. It has no fact in nature and no standing in experience. The only thing that "resolves" the conflict is the state's power to enforce its verdict. This ability to club one or both parties into submission to its command is called "justice." It's the only kind of "justice" the state knows and can administer.
It's through this system of "justice" that every state has used its power to favor its friends and to punish its enemies and, in every case, to increase its power over the people.
As anarchists, we say with George Barrett, "such disputes are very much better settled without the interference of authority."
But if it is argued that leaving disputes to be settled voluntarily and without the interference of some ultimate and powerful authority will lead to the eventual domination of the strong over the weak, we answer that today this precisely what you have. The government's strength insures that its will will be done, whether the ends of true justice are served or not.
Perhaps the most socially destructive and far reaching influence this system of "justice via the club" has, lies in what it does to people themselves. It accustoms them to violent settlements of their differences instead of forcing them to rely on the sometimes more difficult but ultimately more peaceful system of arbitrating their problems. In the long run a people's dependence on governmentally established procedures for settling disputes leads to a crippling of that people's ability to settle their own disputes. It accustoms them to look to power for a settlement of all their difficulties and ultimately to confuse real justice with justice brought by the club. It leads in the end to more conflict as people grapple for the reigns of power in order to impose their desires on their neighbors. A lust for power is created and rewarded. The natural tendency of people to peacefully and voluntarily settle their problems is replaced by a system that neither honors nor respects nor tolerates our neighbors.
At the heart of our answer to the second objection are two observations anarchists have long made:
1) that disputes between individuals will neither be common nor long-lived and will not be as destructive to life and property and as hurtful to innocent and uninvolved third parties as are disputes that arise between peoples when they are ruled by governments.
2) that free people, though far from perfect, will be more likely to find reasonable and just solutions to human problems than will ever be found through the exercise of the state's power to intervene in all disputes.
ANSWER: There are several implied fallacies in this objection:
1) that in a system of non-coercive or natural justice, that is, in an anarchist world, people will naturally degenerate into vile creatures and turn on their neighbors. There will be a war of all against all. (See Objection #4.)
2) that people will quite naturally turn to the club as the foundation of all their social relationships. Violence is viewed as the most effective method of securing valuable human relationships.
3) Leaving retaliatory force in the government's hands will insure that it will be used only as retaliatory force, and when it is administered, it will be done so justly.
As anarchists, we say with Benjamin Tucker: "the State takes advantage of its monopoly of defence to furnish invasion instead of protection." Because we rightly fear power in anyone's hands, we recognize the foolhardiness of establishing a government with a monopoly of power and then expecting that government not to abuse that power. If it's dangerous to allow individuals to protect themselves, how much more dangerous it is to give that power to government.
ANSWER: This objection rests upon a basic but always recurring fallacy - the notion that men are by nature anti-social and anti-cooperative. And just as wrongly, it proposes government as the solution to man's supposed inclination to destroy or injure all of his fellow humans. This is a positively absurd concept of man's nature and is topped only by the even more absurd faith government preachers have in an assumed benevolent nature of government.
Government does not spring from some fancied weakness in human nature that demands it exist to protect us from each other. Rather, it is created by conquest and is a tool used by a ruling clique to rule and exploit others.
The idea that government springs from man's wickedness, yet itself somehow remaining immune to that wickedness, has been rumbling around in the heads of government apologists for centuries. But, how can imperfect men be given power over their fellow men and be expected to use the power in any but an imperfect way? The mystique of the state apparently makes that question unnecessary for government believers to answer.
Imperfect men driven by imperfect motives somehow, by the theory of government apologists, create perfect or near perfect mechanisms for settling the most pressing problems that afflict men. If there is any theory that qualifies for the land of make-believe, it is this faith in the wisdom, justice, and benevolence of government.
We can, and as anarchists, we do recognize that some people, regardless of the social system involved, will take advantage of others. We deny that this exploitation will be widespread and we can point to solid social evidence to prove our position. What violence there is will be sporadic and short-lived and will have no relation to the bogeyman of "war of all against all" preached by anti-anarchists. Though disputes will not be widespread, or numerous, they will, however, occur.
We must find ways to protect ourselves from predators. But we suggest that the way to do that is not to give people naturally bent toward predation (politicians and other power seekers) a sanctioned means to control us.
In addition to recognizing that there will be no general "war of all against all" in an anarchist world, it is important to note, in dealing with this objection, that between anarchists and statists there is a fundamental difference in their approach to dealing with human problems. It was outlined well by Fred Woodworth in his interesting pamphlet on "Anarchism," when he wrote:
Whereas ordinary people will normally rank interpersonal violence as a last resort of social breakdown or crisis, government operates with violence as its immediate priority; determined course of action are decreed, not voluntarily decided upon; ordered, not freely accepted. If the principle of government were extended consistently and uniformly throughout society, true chaos would result - every civilized relationship would give way to the gun or knife; force, not persuasion. We have only the principle of Anarchy operating - the principle of no compulsion - to thank for the fact that the present social condition is not as faulty as it might be. Numerous social interactions even today still taKe place with an absence of compulsion, although State-ordained procedures are of course increasing daily. In the remaining spontaneous relationships between persons there is no ubiquitous policeman interceding (yet); nonetheless, most transactions, conversations, even quarrels, are accomplished without resort to coercion. Government's standard operating procedure is to use coercion first and discuss matters afterward: "Under penalty of three years in the federal penitentiary or $10,000 fine, or both, you are herewith required to.." etc. This reversal of proper order, and exaggerated tendency to resort to force, is completely typical of governments; the tendency to place social compulsion uppermost is certainly not natural or justified. It should be noted that even those people who defend government get along fine without it in their relations with friends or neighbors, most of the time, and woud think a person rude, insulting, and violent who behaved privately as governments do publicly.
Without government and the power government has to deliver a regimented "justice," people would have no effective or sustained means of dominating their neighbors. Without government they would have to deal with each other as equals and use persuasion and compromise as the basic tools of their social relationships.
But with government, they can short-circuit all the natural social bonds people create to peacefully settle problems. They don't need to persuade; they can club you into submission. They don't need to deal with you directly, they can manipulate a third party to do their bullying for them. Neighbors are driven apart by government. When there is force involved, the ties developed by natural society are crushed.
Left to themselves, people will develop their own rules of social life. These rules need not be uniform in all places, and there need be no one special method of enforcing them. People will naturally find their own solutions to problems and their own ways of establishing and defining the rules of their social life. As anarchists we do not dictate what social institutions will be used to deal with crime. People will have to discover them for themselves.
It's not anarchism that breeds chaos. To government belongs that responsibility. It is not the anarchists who are the violent members of society - it's the government rulers that hold that distinction.
ANSWER: I don't propose any system of social organization. Whether people would establish agencies for defense purposes or would keep that responsibility for themselves, makes no difference. So long as they did it without coercion, whatever form it took, it would be anarchistic. Anarchist philosophy doesn't dictate what system of protection would be best; that is a practical problem that must be solved again and again by people everywhere.
If tomorrow all police functions were turned over to private police forces, we would have no libertarian society. We would just exchange one set of masters for another. Private police forces are no guarantee of a libertarian society, only the people are. And the people will do it only when they are properly disposed to creating a truly free world. Benjamin Tucker explained it thus: "The moment one abandons the idea that he was born to discover what is right and enforce it upon the rest of the world, he begins to feel an increasing disposition to let others alone and to refrain even from retaliation or resistance except in those emergencies which immediately and imperatively require it." When enough people feel this way, we will have an anarchist society.
Anarchism is a social revolution that will occur only from the bottom up, never from the top down. It must be a people's movement, not a leaders' movement.
To talk about private police forces without realizing that they are not an essential element in creating a libertarian world, but might be a natural outgrowth of that world, is to confuse cause with effect. Such police forces won't bring anarchism, but anarchism might create such police forces. There are no formulas for creating a libertarian social order, and there is, likewise, no way of knowing what shapes social institutions will take in a libertarian society. The future must be free to make its own arrangements. We are not here to design blueprints for society. We are proposing no utopia.
ANSWER: Most "criminals" in our government-controlled world are victims of the law. They are criminals not because they have injured someone else, but because they have violated some government commandment. They have broken some victimless crime law or some edict the state proclaimed to promote its own welfare, e.g., the draft law or income tax law. Abolish the state and these people will no longer be criminals.
There are some individuals who are genuine criminals - the robber, rapist, murderer - who will have to be dealt with. Whether we protect ourselves individually from these ruffians, or by organizing private defense agencies; whether we try them in courts or at the scene of the crime; whether we imprison them or make them pay restitution to their victims, are all issues that must be settled by anarchist societies when they are faced with the problems. Free people will find ways to secure protection and justice for themselves. The point to be understood is that they will do it for themselves when the need arises. It's not for us to program how they must do it.
There is yet another type of criminal, the institutional criminal, that poses the greatest danger to the health, safety, and welfare of people. He, too, is created by the law, but he has this advantage over all other criminals; he is also the law-maker and the judge of his laws. He is the government.
It is government itself that has been the world's greatest criminal. In the name of patriotism or national defense or manifest destiny or just plain greed, he has slaughtered more people, stolen more money, and terrorized more individuals than have all the criminals throughout all the centuries of human history. It is government that wages war, operates concentration camps and taxes the people. It's government that used the rack, operated the guillotine, and dropped the atom bomb. Not anarchists. It's not an anarchist world that is chaotic and full of conflict - it's the one in which the state exists. And it's because of the state, not in spite of it, htat we have all these.
What do we do with criminals in an anarchist world? We get rid of the biggest one and try to deal with the rest as best we can.
ANSWER: This is the plaintive cry of the "limited government" preachers. To this Benjamin Tucker replied: "If limited government is good, the perfection of government is no government."
Somehow, somewhere, given a properly intelligent, some say, "objective" populace, the limited government buff suggests that it will be possible to create a machinery of government that will be controllable. Some of these little-government people may even go so far as to tell you how they will do it. But for most it is pure dream and hope out of which they build their plans for a utopian government.
In many instances this thing they want to create and call a limited government has no relationship and none of the essential characteristics, of any government that has ever existed. Generally, these model states have no power to tax and no absolute jurisdiction over a given territory. Without these essential powers there can be no government.
Government grows; that is its nature. Government is a power broker and an instrument for creating privilege. It must continually take on new functions in order to survive.
Not even the most holy Ayn Rand, followed as she might be with an army of the most objective of objectivists, can change this. It is a fact; it is history. It is the very nature of government.
Regardless of the lessons of history, these limited governmentalists assure us that it is within their power to create a limited government. And these are people who insist on calling anarchists "dreamers" and "utopians."
ANSWER: It's not the anarchist who doesn't understand the nature of man. It's not the anarchist who refuses to learn the lessons history has repeatedly taught. It's not the anarchist who continually puts his hopes in new promises of some nirvana ruled by a "limited" government.
The anarchist cannot be blamed for the world's chaos and terror - for its wars and prison camps and execution chambers, for its surveillance of citizens, for the confiscations of people's property and for the ever-present threat of world-wide nuclear annihilation.
Because we give man credit for being a social animal, we are willing to trust him to deal peaceably with his neighbors - at least most of the time. But we are also wise enough to realize that if we don't want men to abuse power, then we must not give them power. We are realists who recognize man has a social nature, and realists who also know that man, when tempted by power, will be corrupted by it. We say, let man's social nature be the bond that ties men to each other. Yet we warn at the same time that it is because of man's imperfect nature that we must not create government and then trust him to use it peacefully.
Anarchists live in the real world undeluded by dreams of perfect governments, and by hopes that government can reduce crime and eliminate war. We gave up those illusions years ago.
When I had polio my folks were too poor to afford all of the medical bills without assistance from the government. The operations I had in later years, my education, my rehabilitation, and my current employment are all the result of government financing. I believe the U.S. government has been exemplary in providing assistance to the underprivileged, the down-and-out.
Sure, I'm the first to realize the problems in this country, economic, social, etc., but to tout another way by continual criticism of what is, is counterproductive. Give me concrete, workable ways a libertarian based society would protect civil rights, keep the peace, help the economically, physically and mentally disadvantaged of this world. Show me how it would provide food for all of its citizens, stop the exploitation of the "have nots" by the "haves" and maybe I'll begin to take the libertarian views seriously.
True, the current U.S. government hasn't done all of the abovementioned tasks all that well, but at least there is a vehicle which the government can work with to solve the problems that exist today. All I've read in your magazine is what's wrong with the current governmental systems and a bunch of quotes from libertarians or anarchists talking in generalities. Try taking a specific example of some kind of problem and then state in specific terms how a libertarian society at least would attempt to come to grips with it, e.g., helping victims of a polio epidemic who were unable to help themselves.
As far as I know, no civilization has survived for any appreciable amount of time in an anarchist state. I think of the old west and what a mess it was with bandits robbing trains and gun duels in the street and so on. Set up a society from its roots and project how you see it would be in 100 years under anarchy.
I think we're in a sad state of affairs when we think of ourselves first so much we lose track of others and of the sense of mankind that John Dunne so aptly wrote about. I hate governmental corruption and injustices as much as you do, but I just don't think libertarianism is the right way to go. I think it's a step in the wrong direction - 180 degrees wrong.
ANSWER: This objection typifies some people's fears that anarchist societies will not work. In time we will take each of the ideas inherent in your objection, lay them out individually so they can be properly understood and then shall answer them. But in the beginning we must understand the underlying philosophy on which this objection rests.
It is this: government introduces an element to human society that makes it possible for people, particularly the disadvantaged, to live in society. It tempers the rough edges of human life, giving protection and justice to those who otherwise would be crushed in the rush for survival. You are saying that people, left untouched by governmental control, cannot be relied upon to treat with mercy and generosity and fairness those who are weaker or who have fallen on unfortunate circumstances.
Government alone, according to your objection, brings to society the one power that is capable of civilizing human relationships and you suggest that without government we would be cast into a hopeless abyss of bandits and gun duels.
In sum, then, your objection assumes that:
1) people left to themselves will not take care of their unfortunate neighbors. People will not freely help anyone, particularly those who can in no way return the favor. Their only concern is themselves and the whole of natural human society is rooted in the reality that only the strong will survive.
2) government alone can correct this human deficiency. Government and governors apparently are immune from the human failing detailed in the first point. From this we must conclude that the governing class is made up of a specially endowed race of human beings who are possessed of characteristics of generosity and mercy unknown anywhere else in the human family.
3) government has a moral claim nobody else has that authorizes it to coercively redistribute wealth from those who produce it to those who cannot take care of themselves. The unfortunate have a claim on others to support them and that if this support isn't voluntarily forthcoming it can be wrenched by force from those who do not freely choose to give it.
Each of these premises, to say the least, is highly questionable, but because they are implicit in your objection they deserve to be discussed.
Apparently you have grown up in a much different world than I have because all around me I meet people helping other people and not asking anything in return. And this is in spite of all the government programs that discourage this kind of voluntary neighborliness. The thousands of private charitable organizations in this country give an irrefutable answer to your assumption that only government can and will help the disadvantaged. In addition to the many formal institutions of charity, there are an untold number of private acts of charity that escape public attention altogether but which, nevertheless, add a most humanizing element to social life.
Only by ignoring altogether the multitude of non-coercive acts of charity that exist all around us can you begin to believe your assumption that the government was the only institution that would have helped You and your folks through your severe health problem. Admittedly, the government did come to your help, but that doesn't prove no one else would have. All it demonstrates for sure is that no one else needed to.
Your second assumption springs quite naturally from your first. If people will not voluntarily assist their neighbors, then the only way to get them to do so is to force them into it.
Who is to do the forcing? If all people are naturally uncaring and selfish then we cannot hope to find anyone possessing the qualities of mercy and generosity needed to care for the unfortunate. Any who step forward for the task must immediately be suspect for their true motives.
However, if you now deny your first proposition and allow that there indeed are people possessed of the qualities needed to unselfishly aid their brothers, then there are two questions that need be asked.
1) Why is a coercive power needed to force people to pay for this charity if there are people who will voluntarily shoulder the burden of their less fortunate neighbors? If you answer that it is because there aren't enough of these people around with enough money to adequately take care of the needs of the disadvantaged, then:
2) Where do those who use government to force others to pay the bill for this coerced "charity" get the privilege of playing Robin Hood? Were do they get the right to take the products of one persons labor and forcibly redistribute it to someone else who has not earned it? You are ignoring the one person in this highwayman's game who is always a victim - the taxpayer. When you tax him you have admitted that he wouldn't freely have given you his money, so where do you get the right to reach into his pocket to take what you want from him? You may try to excuse this act of thefta as being necessary for a noble purpose, but don't hide its nature as an act of plunder. Who is there that will protect the producer from the ravishing raids of the politically powerful who have set upon their course of plunder wrapped behind a cloak of humanitarianism?
Long ago we should have given up the notion that there is som kind of divine right among rulers, that these political masters are cut from a different cloth than the rest of humankind. This fairy tale just doesn't wash. The presence of such jewels as Richard Nixon and Co. should cause even the most believing of today's believers to question the notion that members of the political class have particularly noble and generous characters and are possessed of angelic qualities lacking in the rest of humanity. The governing class is not an elite arising from the people ordained to save mankind from itself. If history should teach us anything, it is that the political class is composed basically of self-servers who thirst for power and privilege and who have found in government the perfect vehicle to achieve their purpose. They are not the noble denizens of this earth that you picture them to be.
You have suggested that an anarchist world would be one full of bandits and gun duels. But the truth is quite contrary. It's a world in which states exist that is full of banditry and gun duels. Governments are virtually unable to check the acts of individual violence that abound in this country and in many cases are directly and indirectly involved in causing them. Throw in a hopelessly outdated court system that doesn't dispense justice and hardly even gets around to dispensing the law, and you have a system that fails miserably to operate the one service government defenders always claim government alone is capable of providing.
But beyond that there is one fact that government defenders often choose to ignore. That is: The biggest and most aggressive bandits and murderers are the governments themselves. Whatever violence there would be in anarchist societies could only pale in comparison to the violence governments through wars and persecutions have brought to human history.
The legalized murder and plunder that go under the name of war are the creations of your beloved government. All the broken lives, destroyed homes, mained individuals and slaughtered peoples that war leaves in its wake are the children of that state that you so unhesitatingly turn to to be the defender of the downtrodden and helpless.
For everyone like you who has benefitted from the state's system of organized theft, there are dozens whose lives have been ruined or destroyed by that same state. Government stands condemned by it own record as an institution that for centuries has been responsible for massive terror, torture, and slaughter. Government has no equal in this grizzly busines - and never will.
what I have written so far has largely been a negative response to your remarks. Let me for a bit approach this subject from the positive aspect of anarchism. Anarchism is not a dead or negative philosophy as you suggest - it is very much alive with a positive message for humankind. Far from being solely bent on trying to tear down government, anarchists are a people of peace who ask nothing more than that people respect the humanity and individuality of each other and reject coercion as a way of life. Of course we condemn government every opportun