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Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Further Considerations Of Anarchism
Kevin Baker of The Smallest Minority has written a thoughtful, well considered piece on freedom, constitutionalism, education, and related subjects, including anarchism. I recommend it highly to anyone with an interest in the structural requirements of a free or largely free society.
Among Kevin’s points is that freedom-oriented education is at the center of the necessities for the maintenance of freedom. No argument there! That’s why one of the day’s most vital needs is that government-run education either be done away with or be radically reformed. That institution has had more to do with the diminution of freedom in the last century than any other I could name offhand.
The essay got me thinking about sociopolitical stability, both under constitutional and anarchic conditions, and the price one must pay to have it.
Stability is one of those words. Everyone means something different by it. In the extreme, one might say there’s no such thing, since nothing lasts forever, and few things go entirely unchanged while they last. But if we pull back from that “pure” interpretation, we immediately face the following questions:
- What rates and magnitudes of change are compatible with stability?
- How long must an institution or a condition have lasted to be judged stable?
- What price are we willing to pay for what degree of stability?
When a people erects or submits to a political system, there’s usually a consensus idea about what ought to follow. However, the consensus always imbeds internal variations. Many Iraqis, for example, hope to transform their embryonic republic into an Islamic theocracy, while others hope to keep it entirely secular. Neither of these outcomes is precluded by the political structure now in place in Iraq. Nor would any imaginable near-term developments in one direction foreclose a subsequent swing in the other.
During our Revolutionary period, many colonists hoped that an American monarchy would replace the British one, while others hoped never again to bend the knee to a monarch or a hereditary aristocracy. The latter group prevailed, though few persons know how close we came to the preferences of the former, with George Washington becoming King George I of these United States. Nor is it impossible that an American royalty might arise in the future, from one of our nascent political dynasties such as the Kennedys or the Bushes.
In the American Revolutionary setting, the central theme was freedom. Monarchy was viewed as incompatible with it, yet this is hardly the case in principle. Indeed, one could make a good argument that monarchy is more compatible with freedom than many other political forms, possibly including our current one. But the colonists saw things otherwise, on the basis of their experiences and the history of the world as they’d learned it.
What the colonists did get, indisputably, from the developments of the Founding was a significant degree of liberty and stability. Not complete liberty: there were still taxes, and laws forbidding various consensual acts, and regulations of commerce and industry. Not complete stability, either: consider the Alien and Sedition Acts, the political upheavals of the Jefferson Administration, the War of 1812, and the maneuverings of the mercantile class to bend the laws ever further toward their advantage. Still, it appears to have been a good bargain, which is one of the reasons why we venerate the Founders and admire their handiwork.
However, the colonists-turned-Americans did pay a price. Part of it is described immediately above. Another part was the surrender of other possibilities, such as those that might have arisen under a loose association of state-sized sovereignties such as the Articles of Confederation had created. A third part was the surrender of a principle: the dictum that every man is free by natural right, and not to be coerced by any other.
Upholding that final principle would have exacted a price the colonists were not willing to pay: the adventure of anarchy. Only anarchy truly respects the natural-rights premise of individual liberty. But anarchism has no answer for those who ask for stability. Because it’s not a system of government but the absence of all government, an anarchy cannot guarantee that tomorrow’s social vista will resemble today’s in any way.
Yet there have been stable anarchic societies: Ireland from about 600 up to about 1600; Iceland in the four centuries before its annexation to Denmark; Sumer before the founding of Rome. That’s not many, but even one example is enough to disprove the contention that anarchy and stability are entirely incompatible. We ought to have expected this, for we’ve seen many demonstrations that even the strongest government is capable of dissolving in a flash. If there’s a dependency between governmental structure and social stability, it’s not absolute. It might be quite weak.
Ultimately, the question of anarchism versus constitutionalism is one that can only be answered with other questions:
- How much certainty do you demand about matters of war, civil and criminal law, and the administration of justice?
- How much say do you want in the decisions of your neighbors and more remote fellow citizens?
- How high a price, measured in exceptions to the pure principles of natural rights, are you willing to pay to have those things?
Had today’s electorate received a more comprehensive education in the history of political thought, and a more profound treatment of the consequences of various structural decisions in the formation of political systems, it is possible that the answers it would give to those questions would be entirely different from the answers that are commonplace today. Whether the result would be at all stable over time is, of course, a question only time itself could answer.
The debate will continue.
Comments
I have only two problems with anarchic societies:
1) They are vulnerable to invasion and overthrow by coercive societies
2) Their ability to accomplish what I consider to be “great works” is essentially zilch.
For example, I believe the future of mankind is other than on the surface of this planet. I find it highly doubtful that an exclusively free-market solution will be found that makes it possible for us to leave here. I could be wrong, but I see no evidence that any sufficiently large group of people will ever work together outside a coercive government environment to achieve it.
My fear is that China represents the only goverment with sufficient will and resources to accomplish it. I would rather that society not be the one that spreads into space.
Posted by Kevin Baker on 09/07/2004 at 10:59 AMIt doesn’t seem like the governmental solution [NASA] is in any great hurry to make it possible for us to leave this dirtball, either, so…
Posted by Ironbear on 09/07/2004 at 09:32 PMAnarchy itself is one of those concepts that I have a love/hate relationship with. It’s attractive in theory for the reasons you stated in that it does adhere to the natural rights philosophy, but I’m too cynical to believe in it’s ability to work in practice.
I suppose that’s why I’m a government minimalist: it’s the best possible compromise between the benefits of anarchy and the dubious benefits of statism. Only problem is my doubts on wether government minimalism is truly achievable…
Posted by Ironbear on 09/07/2004 at 09:50 PMMinimalism is achievable, see the US gov’t immediately pre- and post-adoption of the Constitution.
Problem is, it never stays minimal. The nature of the beast is to grow.
The Founders thought they’d constructed a system to limit growth, but they only slowed it a bit.
Adams said that the Constitution would work only for a “moral and religious people.” Well, we aren’t, and it isn’t.
Posted by Kevin Baker on 09/09/2004 at 12:55 AM
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