IN DEFENSE OF RATIONAL ANARCHISM

By George H. Smith

November 23, 1997

Anarchism is a theory of the good society, in which justice and social order are maintained without the State (or government). Many anarchists in the libertarian movement (including myself) were heavily influenced by the epistemological and moral theories of Ayn Rand. According to these anarchists, Rand's principles, if consistently applied, lead necessarily to a repudiation of government on moral grounds.

I call this "rational anarchism," because it is grounded in the belief that we are fully capable, through reason, of discerning the principles of justice; and that we are capable, through rational persuasion and voluntary agreement, of establishing whatever institutions are necessary for the preservation and enforcement of justice. It is precisely because no government can be established by means of reason and mutual consent that all Objectivists should reject that institution as unjust in both theory and practice.

Although it is sometime useful to distinguish between the meanings of "State" and "government," such distinctions are irrelevant to the present discussion, so I shall use the terms interchangeably. Following the classic discussion of the sociologist and historian Max Weber, I shall define the "State" as a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory."

The State is vested with the exclusive power to enact legislation, adjudicate legal disputes, enforce laws, etc., while forcibly preventing other individuals and associations from engaging in the same activities. The State, in other words, exercises a coercive monopoly in the enforcement of justice. This ultimate power of decision-making is known in political theory as "sovereignty." In the words of the historian A. P. d'Entreves, "the problem of the birth of the modern State is no other than the problem of the rise and final acceptance of the concept of sovereignty."

The concept of sovereignty is the focal point of the current debate between anarchists and minarchists (a label coined by Sam Konkin for the advocates of minimal, or "limited," government). The fundamental problem is this: Where does the right of sovereignty come from, and how can it be justified? This is an especially difficult problem for those in the Lockeian tradition of minarchism -- which, in this context, includes the followers of Ayn Rand.

John Locke (like Ayn Rand) believed that all rights belong to individuals. There are no special "group rights" that exist in addition to individual rights. The rights of all groups (including the group that calls itself a "government") must be based on, and in some way derived from, the rights of individuals.

I call this approach "political reductionism," because it maintains that the sovereign rights of a (legitimate) government are reducible to the rights of individuals. Political reductionism stands in opposition to political emergence theory, which argues that at least one right (usually the right to enforce the precepts of justice) does not originally belong to individuals, but emerges only in civil societies under government.

Now, having presented this background material, I will address several key issues in the minarchist/anarchist controversy.

(1) According to John Locke, every person in an anarchistic state of nature would possess the "executive power" to enforce his own rights against the aggressive actions of others. But owing to various "inconveniences" (such as the likelihood of personal bias when acting as judge in one's own case), Locke argued that rational people would unanimously agree to leave this state of nature and join a "civil society," which would thereafter use majority rule to decide upon a particular form of government, such as constitutional monarchy, democracy, and so forth.

This "social contract" was Locke's way of accounting for our obligation to obey the political sovereign. Beginning with the rights of individuals, Locke tried to show how the executive power to enforce these natural rights would be delegated, through a process of consent, to government. Eighteenth-century Americans were chiefly indebted to John Locke for their belief in government by consent.

Ayn Rand defends a consent doctrine in several of her essays, but she never explains how this consent should manifest itself -- whether, for example, it must be explicit or merely tacit (as Locke believed). Nor does she explain precisely which rights are delegated to government and how they are transferred. Therefore, although Rand appears to fall within the social contract tradition (at least in a general way), it is unclear where she would stand on the nature and method of political consent. I sincerely hope that some of her minarchist followers can shed some light on this problem.

(2) Many of John Locke's critics -- such as David Hume, Josiah Tucker, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Jeremy Bentham -- argued that the inner logic of consent theory, if consistently applied, will land us in anarchy. As these critics pointed out, no government has ever originated in consent, and there is no reason to suppose that individuals, in full possession of their natural rights, would ever subordinate themselves voluntarily to a government.

I agree with these critics. If we accept the premise that individuals (and only individuals) possess equal and reciprocal rights, and if we insist that these individuals must consent to be ruled by a government, and if we condemn as illegitimate all governments that rule without consent – then all governments, past and present, have been illegitimate.

Furthermore, I maintain that Objectivists, if they are to remain true to the consent doctrine, must embrace this kind of "practical anarchism" and condemn all historical governments as unjust. True, Objectivists insist that government can be justified in theory -- though none (that I know of) has ever spelled out the necessary criteria -- but this theoretically legitimate government has never existed anywhere on this earth. Nor can it exist anywhere except in what Edmund Burke called "the fairyland of philosophy." As Josiah Tucker (a contemporary of Burke) put it, the consent theory of government is "the universal demolisher of all governments, but not the builder of any."

John Locke identified two fundamental problems that must be addressed by the political philosopher. First, what is the justification of the State? Second, assuming that we can justify the State in theory, what are the standards by which we can judge the legitimacy of a particular government? Too often minarchists deal only with the first question, while ignoring the second.

Suppose I am asked what could conceivably change my mind and cause me to endorse government, and suppose I give the following reply: "If I believed in the God of Christianity, and if I believed that God had dispatched a squad of angels to communicate with me personally, and if these angels told me that the State is a divine institution, ordained by God for the protection of human rights, and if these angels further informed me that anarchism would lead to widespread death and destruction -- then, under these circumstances, I would abandon my anarchism in favor of minarchism."

But consider an important feature that would be missing from my newfound justification of the State. While believing that the State is justified, qua institution, I would not possess specific standards by which to judge whether a self-professed "government" is in fact a legitimate State at all, or whether it is merely a gang of usurpers and oppressors who claim to act on behalf of that divine institution.

As a remedy for this problem, suppose the angels provide me with a clear and unmistakable standard, to wit: "You will know legitimate rulers by the visible halos over their heads. This sign, and this sign alone, will mark the agents who are authorized by God to act on behalf of the State." Well, after looking around at the functionaries of existing governments, and after seeing no such halos, I would conclude that no one who presently claims to represent the State is morally authorized to do so. On the contrary, I would surmise that America is currently in a state of anarchy, since it contains no legitimate government -- so, devoted minarchist that I am, I would dedicate my life to abolishing our wicked "government" and to exposing those Satanic politicians who fraudulently pose as functionaries of that divine institution, the State.

This is a species of the "practical anarchism" that Objectivists must logically endorse. For halos, they have substituted consent as the discernible sign of a legitimate government -- and, like halos, consent is nowhere to be found in real-life governments. Hence, while defending the State in theory, these consent-minarchists should oppose all existing governments in practice. And this, I dare say, is a kind of minarchism that I can live with quite well -- for we are more likely to be visited by angels than to find a government based on consent.

(3) My next point will probably cause me to be branded as an psycho-epistemological pervert, but here it is: I am convinced that Ayn Rand was essentially an anarchist in substance, if not in name. She was at most a nominal governmentalist. If the conventional meaning of a word is to count for anything at all (and it should), then Rand's ideal "government" is in fact no government at all, but is merely a sheep in wolf's clothing.

How can I make this outrageous claim? I base it on Rand's moral opposition to coercive taxation. The power of coercive taxation, as Alexander Hamilton said in THE FEDERALIST PAPERS, is the very life-blood of government. Indeed, the great debate over ratification of the United States Constitution centered on whether or not the federal government should have the power to tax. The Articles of Confederation had withheld this power from Congress, reserving it exclusively for the states. Many Anti-Federalists opposed the Constitution because they realized that the federal government, if granted the power to lay and collect taxes directly from the people, would strip the states of their sovereign authority.

If the defenders of either side in the ratification debate had encountered Rand's argument for "voluntary taxation," they would have assailed it, first, as a veritable contradiction in terms (which it is), and, secondly, as a rejection of sovereign government altogether (which it also is). Virtually every defender of government -- from John Locke to Thomas Jefferson to Ludwig von Mises -- has recognized coercive taxation to be an essential component of sovereignty, a power without which no true government can exist.

The principle of "voluntary taxation" reduces Rand's "government" to a free-market protection agency, which, like every business, must either satisfy its customers or close up shop. What is to prevent a dissatisfied customer from withholding his money from a Randian "government," while subscribing instead to the services of another agency? Why cannot a landowner (or combination of landowners) refuse to pay for the services of their Randian "government," which they regard as inefficient, and take their business elsewhere?

The right to pay for services or not, according to one's own judgment, is a characteristic of the free market; it has no relationship, either theoretically or historically, to the institution of government. There is no way a government can retain its sovereign power -- its monopoly on the use of legitimate force -- if it does not possess the power of compulsory taxation.

When the nineteenth-century minarchist Auberon Herbert advanced his theory of "voluntary taxation," he was widely praised by anarchists, such as Benjamin Tucker, who embraced him as one of their own. But he was assailed by fellow minarchists, such as Herbert Spencer, who correctly pointed out that Herbert's position was indistinguishable from anarchism. Likewise, Rand's position on taxation places her squarely in the anarchist camp -- her idiosyncratic use of the word "government" notwithstanding. We should focus in this debate on the concept of government and its essential characteristics, not on the word usage of a particular writer.

(4) I defend anarchism, or society without the State, because I believe that innocent people cannot be forced to surrender any of their natural rights. Those who wish to delegate some of their rights to a government are free to do so, provided they do not violate the rights of dissenters who choose not to endorse their government.

As Ayn Rand has said, the lives of other people are not yours to dispose of. Yet this is precisely what every government attempts to do. A government initiates physical force (or the threat of force) to prohibit other people from exercising their right to enforce the rules of justice. (Either every person has this executive power, or no one does, according to the principle of political reductionism.) A government, while engaging in certain activities which it claims are just, coercively prevents other people from engaging in those selfsame activities.

By what moral means, I ask, does a government come to possess this exclusive right? A government cannot bestow justice on an action that would be unjust if undertaken by someone else. Nor can a government, through force or arbitrary decree, render an action unjust when undertaken by someone else, if that same action is just when undertaken by government. The principles of justice are objective and therefore universal; they apply equally and without exception to every human being, as does every rational precept and procedure. A mathematical computation, for example, cannot be correct when computed by a government, and incorrect when computed by someone else. A deductive syllogism, if valid for those in government, is equally valid for those outside of government. Murder, if wrong when committed by an individual, is equally wrong when committed by a government.

Likewise, an activity, if moral when pursued by a government, is equally moral when pursued by someone else. All this should be obvious to those who agree with the principles put forth by Ayn Rand. If, therefore, the principles of justice are objective (i.e., knowable to human reason), then a government can no more claim a monopoly on the legitimate use of force than it can claim a monopoly on reason.

Those minarchists who claim that justice can prevail only under government must implicitly defend the view that justice is either subjective or intrinsic. If justice is subjective, if it varies from one person to the next, then government can be defended as necessary to establish objective rules. Likewise, if justice is intrinsic to government itself, if whatever a government decrees is necessarily just, then government is justified automatically.

If, however, justice is neither subjective nor intrinsic, but instead is objective -- i.e., if it can be derived by rational methods from the facts of man's nature and the requirements of social existence -- then the principles of justice are knowable to every rational person. This means that no person, group of persons, association, or institution whether known as "government," "State," or by any other name -- can rightfully claim a legal monopoly in matters pertaining to justice. Rational anarchism, in short, is simply the application of Ayn Rand theory of objective knowledge to the realm of justice.