Whether the realization of anarcho-capitalism would create just a different kind of State: a brief reply

More than occasionally, an objection is raised against anarcho-capitalism that goes something like this:  Since the private courts, private security, etc. envisaged by anarcho-capitalists would employ coercion against people, then anarcho-capitalism would just be a different kind of State, but a State nonetheless.

At first blush, this may seem to be true, but upon the tiniest examination it falls apart.  First, we must keep in mind the true scope of the non-aggression principle:  it is far more circumscribed than opponents of anarcho-capitalism would have it.  It states, briefly, an ethic of not initiating violence against another person or his property.  If, however, some clown breaks into your house and steals your best pair of shoes, then, in the anarcho-capitalist system you can take him to court to mete out some kind of justice for this theft.  The thief, in this case, is not  a victim of coercion; he is an aggressor.  (That being said, this doesn’t mean that I support much of what our modern criminal justice system does, even in cases of real crimes such as theft, as distinguished from the non-crimes dreamed up by positive law, such as the requirement to have your car inspected every year, or the ban on certain drugs deemed “illicit.”)

The system of private courts, etc, is far different than that which obtains under a State, however; for in a State, very often the violence is initiated by the government itself.  The citizen has done nothing wrong, is just trying to live his life, make it through his day, feed his children and buy his wife something nice for her birthday.  Then the tax man comes and says, “Give us half your money or else…”  Let’s say he makes a mistake on his tax return.  He could be fined, to say the very least.  This is aggression; it is even violence, since taxes are collected, ultimately, at the point of a gun.  Or there’s a lazy ass teenager sitting in his mother’s basement, smoking pot and playing video games, wasting his life and embarrassing everyone who loves him.  Then one day a judge warehouses him for smoking the bud.

But what have these citizens done?  They have neither inflicted violence on anyone, nor have they stolen from anyone.  Why, then, should the law be concerned with them?  Yet the State concerns itself with non-violent “criminals” all the time.  Since these non-criminals have violated no one’s rights, but only the Utopian schemes of the authors of positive law, then they are the ones who are the victims of aggression when the State puts them in shackles.

Murray Rothbard cleared new land by combining the tradition of natural rights with the system of capitalism.  For more on this subject, his book The Ethics of Liberty is strongly recommended.  In this work he outlines how the anarcho-capitalist system will work, not through violence and coercion as the State operates, but through mutual exchange based on private property rights.    The work of Rothbard needs to be advanced as much as possible, so that one day the inalienable rights of mankind will rule our law, not by force of positive diktat, but by the triumph of the non-aggression principle, enshrined as the starting point for the ethical system on which our society is based.

Must-read books from 2009

Every year I keep track of what I read.  It’s a bit nerdy, for sure, but it helps to keep me motivated.  This year’s reading was so interesting that I decided to put off writing this post until the year was, for all intents and purposes, over.  Last year I managed to get the list out in time for Christmas shopping.  This time you’ll have to refer to this compilation for birthdays or something.

In the past twelve months, I’ve managed to start and finish thirty three books, which I actually consider to be modest.  I’d far rather be averaging one per week.  Of these, I’ve chosen ten to discuss, which is a rather high proportion; nevertheless there was no difficulty in coming up with books that were deserving of singular mention.  There is no rhyme or reason to the order of this list, and most of them should appeal to a broad range of people.

Henry Hazlitt:  Economics in One Lesson

How I found it: This book is constantly referenced in literature put out by the Mises Institute.

In a relatively short volume, using concise, easy-to-understand language, Hazlitt discusses some of the most basic concepts of economics.  The backdrop for this book is the wave of Keynesianism and Socialism that swept the West in the early-mid 20th century.  One of Hazlitt’s most beautiful insights concerns the unseen effects of policy decisions.  One example would be artificially high wage rates as demanded by labor unions.  On the surface this appears to benefit the workers, but the effects of this man-made price floor ripple through the economy, until they come to damage the interests even of the labor unions themselves.  This is an excellent beginner’s book on economics; no prior reading is necessary.

Oliver Sacks:  Musicophilia

How I found it: Stumbled upon it while Christmas shopping in 2008

Expectans, expectavi Domine…..This book makes me think of a piece of Gregorian chant, an offertory melody whose text is, “I have waited, waited on the Lord…..and he put a New Song into my mouth.”  Sacks fills this book with heaps of fascinating information and incredible stories.  If you can read it with a dry eye, you’re a better man than I am.  One account early in the book relates the story of a man who had never been involved in any way with music in his entire life; then one day he was struck by lightning, and began composing and playing the piano.  A surgeon friend of mine tells me that neuroscientists such as Oliver Sacks tend to have more of an appreciation for the spiritual, and one does indeed get this impression from Sacks, who seems to be steeped in just as much wonder and amazement at these things as his readers.  Moreover, musicians will find the reading of this book to be an experience of renewal, a re-awakening to the truth that music is indeed a gift to be cherished.

Naomi Klein:  The Shock Doctrine

How I found it: After a lively lunchtime discussion about politics with a musician friend, he escorted me to the bookstore and bought it for me.

“But this isn’t capitalism!”  I found myself saying this over and over again as I read through this incredibly revealing book. Klein passionately and thoroughly exposes the work of the merchants of death in the U.S. government, from CIA operatives and psychologists (who perfected torture techniques already in the 1950′s) to the infamous economist Milton Friedman.  Under the name of capitalism, the United States effected coups, killed people, and established fascistic economic systems (I’m using this term literally, not pejoratively) in faraway lands, like wolves in sheeps’ clothing.  The book is hardly sympathetic to the free market, but proponents of capitalism need to read this book and reckon with what some jackasses have done over the years while falsely claiming to be friends of the free market.  For me, it lead to a more precise definition of capitalism:  The system of voluntary exchange which results from the ethic of non-aggression and private property rights.  As one will find out from this book, the U.S. government respects neither the principle of non-aggression nor private property rights.

Ludwig von Mises:  Human Action

How I found it: You can’t get through two articles from an Austrian economist without seeing this book cited.

At nearly 900 pages, Human Action is Mises’ grand discourse.  The profound and most basic difference that Mises’ approach has with others is that it bases the study of economics on—well, human action.  It is the gentle and humble opposite of the arrogance of Rand’s Objectivism and Friedman’s mathematical equations.  Most refreshing is Mises’ allowance of subjectivity in the field of economics.  If I were to recommend one tiny section of this book over all others, though, it would be Mises’ criticism of the holistic view of society, a section that soundly rejects the sanctimony of many do-gooders, while at the same time showing that Austrian economics, rather than being atomistic, actually considers the good of the culture at large and posits that voluntary exchange on the free market is the way to achieve it.

J.L. Carr: A Month in the Country

How I found it: A friend lent it to me.

I am absolutely horrible about reading enough fiction, so I rely largely on friends to bring such things my way—actually, one friend in particular, who’s taste has proven to be quite sturdy.  One of the strengths of fiction is that general principles can be taught without tempting readers to quibble over minutiae the way certain kinds of non-fiction do.  Carr is British, and this is a short story about an artist that leaves London to spend a month in the countryside restoring the apse painting of a church.  While he’s there he sleeps in the bell tower and kibitzes with a lunatic archaeologist who’s charged with finding someone’s remains in the church yard.  A delightful little read that can be done in one afternoon on your front porch with a cold glass of iced tea.  (Perhaps save this one for Spring, then…)

Haruki Murakami:  What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

How I found it: Browsing the book store looking for ways to throw money away

This title jumped right out at me, given that I’m a runner.  This is not a systematic “how-to” book or anything; it’s just a flow of conscious account of one man’s affair with the greatest sport in the world.  Murakami, a jazz bar owner-turned novelist, relates his journal entries to the reader.  This includes an account of his run along the original route that ends in Marathon, Greece, from which we get the name and distance for running events.  The title, he tells us, is based on someone else’s work which is called “What I Talk About When I Talk About Love,” and this is apposite.  The runner will find this book to be a source of new energy; non-runners will finish it perhaps a bit more curious about what it is that they’re missing.

John Robinson:  Dungeon, Fire and Sword

How I found it: Borrowed from a friend

This is the story of the Knights Templar during the Crusades.  In it you will find all manner of sanctimony, hypocrisy, and hiding behind religion for the sake of a political agenda.  The original mission of the Knights Templar was to guard the Temple Mount in Jerusalem when it was under Christian control.  Job creep set in, and, among other things, they came to guard the road to Compostella, a popular pilgrimage site, and to be some of the world’s first bankers.  They participated fervently in the mindless orgies that were the Crusades, proving that Islam is not the only religion to commit barbaric acts of war under the guise obedience to God and faith.  Ultimately, the success of the Templars was their undoing.  King Philip IV of France, who owed them enormous sums of money, manipulated an unholy alliance with the papacy to have the Knights tortured, tried, and killed on trumped up charges.  In a dramatic conclusion, Jacques de Molay, the last grand master of this order, was marched into the cathedral square in Paris to confess the “official version of events,” and in one last moment of courage, told the crowd the truth of what had been done to this order.  For this, he was rewarded with summary execution, but one cannot escape the impression that he was ultimately victorious over the lust for power which gripped the monarchs and the papacy at that time.

Murray N. Rothbard:  The Anatomy of the State

How I found it: On mises.org

At only fifty-plus pages, this book makes for good introductory reading to the anarcho-capitalist political philosophy.  In the short chapters contained in this volume, Rothbard contends with the superstitions that make people believe that the State is necessary.  The reading is not difficult; yet, the writer leaves out nothing of importance.  This would be a good companion alongside Albert Jay Nock’s Our Enemy, the State, with the added blessing that Rothbard does not suffer from Nock’s sometimes tiresome fatalism.

Louis Cheslock, ed.:  H.L. Mencken on Music

How I found it: Roaming around Bookhaven, a used book store in Philadelphia.

I have already reviewed this book here.

Richard M. Weaver:  The Ethics of Rhetoric

How I found it: Brought to my attention by Br. Stephen, of course

What would a year be without at least one Weaver book?  Like most of his work, I’m not sure how much of this volume I’ve absorbed; it may be worth a re-reading sooner rather than later.  Unlike the other volumes I’ve discussed here, I’ve actually had to pull this one off the shelf and thumb through it to jog my memory about what the writer discusses.  Among other things, some of which went over my head completely, Weaver discusses Edmund Burke’s use of the Argument from Circumstance and Lincoln’s use of the Argument from Definition.  The writer seems to have a surprising amount of admiration for Lincoln, given his dyed-in-the-wool Southern ways of thinking.  Perhaps the most interesting chapter in this book is Weaver’s exploration of grammar as it relates to rhetoric:  avoid the adjective, he says; it only begs the question.  Good advice which I have yet to follow.  Another chapter worth a great deal of study deals with the use of what Weaver calls ultimate terms:  ”God words” and “devil words.”  This discussion is still timely.  Think of how people try to shut one another up by hurling accusations of “intolerance” or “Godlessness.”  (Well, maybe I remembered some of this book, after all.)  If you haven’t read any Weaver yet, I’d start with Ideas Have Consequences, or maybe Language is Sermonic.  The Ethics of Rhetoric is a bit heady, and the reader will benefit from some built-up familiarity with the writer’s ways of thinking.

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The great football coach Lou Holtz, the last one to win a national championship at Notre Dame, once said that the difference between where you are now and where you’ll be five years from now comes from the people you meet and the books you read.  In my experience, this is an understatement.  Books are among my favorite things; I would take them first, God forbid, in the event of a fire.  Many of the works I’ve discussed above were given, lent, or recommended to me by friends, and I would like to thank them.  They know who they are.  From personal experience I can say that few things feel as rewarding as having given a book to someone who not only gets it but also appreciates it.  The ideas in books can be so exciting, along with taking them apart and putting them back together again.  I’m not even sure that Belgian beer can compare to this.

“But I’m not a reader.  I just don’t get into books,” you might say.  To that I can only reply that you haven’t found the right books.  Reading is a tool, not an object in itself.  Find something that piques your curiosity, fires your imagination, or soothes the deepest longings of your soul.  I guarantee you that a book has been written about it.  Tolle, lese.

Happy New Year.

Where does an anarchist find order?

We have spent only a little time on this blog discussing the virtues of anarchy and the ways that it would play out in real life. In a previous post, I mentioned that anarchists, far from advocating chaos, promote a system of order that does not make use of the State or of the government.

It would seem prudent, before this conversation goes too far, to distinguish between order and planning. It is truly fitting that “plan” is a four-letter word. Central Planning has become second nature to most people. Barack Obama and John McCain talk about their plans to make America better–as if it is they rather than the hard working citizens who make America what it is. Indeed, to many, “order” cannot exist without a central plan, without someone to boss around and steal from the various entities in a given society.

Order, however, need not–and in many ways cannot–come from above, but rather comes from within. As an analogy, I recall Charles Rosen’s insight that the symmetrical form of Classical era music (Mozart and Haydn in particular) was not imposed from without, like a mold, but rather grew organically from within, as each little detail, each contingency, built upon the work. So it is with, for instance, the free market: the mutual exchange of goods and ideas contributes greatly to a harmonious order in society. What might seem chaotic on the microscopic level turns out to be well-crafted on the macroscopic level. The disorganization is only apparent.

There is more, however. Surely one must grant that a society without a grand discourse will fall into shambles. Grand discourses are not exactly in vogue in these the days of rampant horizontalism. Many, perceiving the ensuing chaos from this, call for more government, or even a theocratic monarchy (Those who don’t know the mistakes of history are destined to repeat them), and few of them ever give serious thought to the idea that maybe the best form of government is none at all. Why, that would be chaos!

I find all this to be strange, not to mention self-contradictory. If government were able to prevent societal collapse, then the cities and towns of the 21st century would be in much better shape than they are. What is missing is the metaphysical. Please don’t misunderstand me: I’m not in any way calling for some kind of Christianist State, such as Mike Huckabee might. I’m only saying that a society that is stuck in the sensible world is doomed. Really, the metaphysical is what is needed to maintain society, not governments. An appreciation for the metaphysical, however, comes from private initiative, not from legislative fiat.

F.A. Hayek in his book The Road to Serfdom remarked that the more intrusive a government becomes, the less virtuous the citizenry becomes. Similarly, Richard Weaver warned in Ideas Have Consequences of the encroachments of the State on men who have failed to exhibit virtue. If these two insights are synthesized, the remedy becomes apparent: men must become more virtuous, so that the futility (not to mention the evil) of the State becomes more obvious.

All of this, of course, is up to us. It has nothing to do with electing the right congressman or president, or with gaining a tenuous 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court. Rather, it has everything to do with how we view life (Do we even start from the ancient philosophical idea that life is to be loved and cherished?), how we live, and how we interact with each other.