‘We’ Did That?

I’ve recently realised that I have unwittingly aided in the corruption of language. I have often used a collective term to describe the actions of a state, which falsely attributes ownership of those actions to all people who live within that state. This is not necessarily true, given that an individual person may not be supportive of the actions of the state.

While I don’t mean to suggest that apologists for the state or any other group of people are necessarily behind this corruption of language, I think it definitely has an effect on the way we view the actions of the state. Using collective terminology to describe the actions of an organisation who didn’t offer the people any real choice to opt out (without having to leave their own land), is not fair to the people who would have chosen otherwise. By giving every citizen ownership of those actions, it becomes harder to conceptualise the idea that a government is different to the people it rules over and steals from. It serves to strengthen the illusion of “government by the people for the people”, making people falsely think that they have some kind of real control over what happens.

eg. ‘We’ didn’t go to war in Iraq, because I didn’t go to war in Iraq, the government that owns me did, by stealing my money.  

Let’s start seeing the government for what it is: a monopoly on violence that doesn’t care whether you agree to it’s policies. Even if you don’t agree with that, let’s at least start being more mindful of the language we use, because I shouldn’t have to accept any blame for what the government does, and neither should you.

Personal preference regarding the State vs Anarchism

Throughout all of the arguments presented by anarchists, it is never disputed that people who choose to live under a government have the right to do so. The arguments for anarchism boil down to having the right to individual secession. So consequently this means that I’m not asking you to prefer living under anarchy yourself, I’m merely asking that you recognise the right of all individuals to choose what type of society they would like to live in for themselves. 

So what kind of sacrifice are we talking about here? It would mean you no could longer vote to democratically impose your choices on other people who happen to dislike democracy. It would mean the tax base from which your preferred state authority drew its income from would be diminished (because of people who opted out), meaning that each state might have to reexamine its expenditure to compensate for the reduced income. 

Personally, I think that if market anarchism would be a great success if it were to be tried today on a sufficiently large enough scale (say an area large enough to encompass a few different towns living in anarchy) and if the requisite social change in people’s attitudes was achieved. As long as the surrounding governments or individuals did not try to block trade or get violent with the anarchist area, this anarchist society would represent an opportunity for increased economic growth and expansion because of the zero tax environment where the only regulation is free market competition between firms. In turn, I think this prosperity would encourage secession movements elsewhere, meaning that towns and individuals all over the world would also secede once it is seen that anarchism is viable.

But let’s say you disagree, even if your personal preferences are not the same as mine (ie you prefer statism to anarchism), allowing secession will still have benefits for your preferred statist society, because it means that governments are forced to become more accountable to their citizens. Why would this be? It would be because governments would now have to compete for your income and support, rather than simply taking it by force. It would streamline state services because the government would now have more reason to care about it’s expenses and rules. It would mean that the government would be more cautious about restricting the civil liberties of its citizens because they could just opt out if the laws became too draconian. It would have the effect of changing the current condition of all citizens being held accountable to their government, and make it more of a two way street, so that all governments are also accountable to their citizens.

I’m not asking you to prefer anarchism yourself, I’m only asking you to allow other people a choice.

The War of All Against All

Thomas Hobbes referred to man in the state of nature as living a ’short, nasty, poor and brutish’ life (paraphrased). In Leviathan (1651), it is argued that a state is required to have a monopoly on violence and to be the final authority. Without this state, supposedly society would degenerate into a “war of all against all”.

However, there is a sense in which it could be argued that the “war of all against all” is encouraged with the existence of the state. With the existence of this state, a gargantuan institution of violence, it is clear to see that there are many who petition the state to use its guns for their own purposes. This stems from the fact that the existence of a state forces people to associate with people who they wouldn’t otherwise associate with, stripping the individual of his/her right to freedom of association. This happens wherever individuals are forced to vote, and are also forced to fund state projects that they disagree with.

The fact that government spending happens with stolen money that is coerced under the banner of taxation – entices people to try and get some control over where that money is directed. Businesses and people will ask for government grants to help them get started, or worse, bailouts to help them sustain their unprofitable businesses/lifestyles. The people who want government funding (people who want something for nothing) are ‘at war’ with the taxpayers. The idea that anybody would actually want to be able to keep their own money and decide for themselves becomes laughable to the state and its apologists.

The government’s monopoly on violence is sought out to be used for the purposes of many interest groups, each with their own agendas. Religious groups may want the government to outlaw behaviour that it finds distasteful, even if that behaviour doesn’t infringe on the property rights of others. Take censorship for example, there is absolutely no need to impose a nationwide filter on the internet if personal filters are all that is required for an individual to filter out content they do not wish to view. Unions argue to violently set wages higher than what employers are otherwise willing to pay. Businesses lobby for regulation that restricts competition and entrenches their own position in the market such as anti-competition law, patents, copyrights, special land use rights in cases such as mining/logging etc. 

All of this struggle over state resources and state violence can make other people feel like they need to go and defend themselves via petitioning the state. State interference begets more state interference. The people who are aggressed against seek to defend themselves via the state, but if there was no state at all, this would never have happened. One example is patenting, where the state gives a specific company or person the monopoly on a good. Red hat linux applies for patents, purely to ensure that nobody would “hijack” their product and patent it from underneath them. Clearly they would not have otherwise patented their product, it’s just that the threat of state violence against their business forced them to act.

The fact that state employees don’t literally fight people in the streets doesn’t mean that the state is not violent, the point is that the threat is still there. This institutionalised violence needs to come to an end, and there is no reason why people shouldn’t be given more freedom of choice in the matter. It is their own lifestyle, job, property and money so each person should be allowed to decide for themselves. If you support the existence of coercive govt over people who would choose otherwise, I ask you to please think carefully about what gives you this right.