There’s been a lot happening with the Center for a Stateless Society these days, and more is coming. For a preview of some of our academic plans, see here. (And, of course, please help if you can.)
Tag Archives | Anarchy
Anarchy Begins
Some interesting how-I-became-an-anarchist stories are going up over at Charles’s blog. Read some, add some.
Maddow Bashes Anarchism
Just saw Rachel Maddow explaining that Republicans have a secret hankering for anarchism (if only!), and that the spurious appeal of statelessness can be refuted by considering the nightmarish conditions in Mogadishu, capital of stateless Somalia (interesting that she just happens to pick the area of Somalia with the highest government presence).
The truth, of course, is that in Somalia as a whole, security and prosperity have improved, not deteriorated, as a result of state collapse.
I just sent her (no doubt pointlessly) the links to Benjamin Powell et al.’s article “Somalia After State Collapse: Chaos or Improvement?” (observatori.org/paises/pais_74/documentos/64_somalia.pdf) and Peter Leeson’s “Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After Government Collapse” (peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf).
If anyone wants to join me in this probably futile gesture, her address is rachel@msnbc.com.
Meine Stimme für den Müll!
This is probably not the ad I would come up with if I were offered the chance to air an anarchist political ad on tv:
But man, it sure beats the alternative:
C for Vendetta?
As we tear through the statute book,
we’ll do something no government ever has:
We will ask you which laws you think should go.
we’ll do something no government ever has:
We will ask you which laws you think should go.
– Nick Clegg, to the British public
You’ll be free to do anything you wish.
If you don’t like controls – repeal them.
If you don’t like controls – repeal them.
– Mr. Thompson, offering John Galt the job of Economic Dictator
Nick Clegg is promising (CHT Tom Palmer) all sorts of libertarian goodies, including “the end of the controversial ID cards scheme” and “the scrapping of universal DNA databases.” Other state intrusions to be abolished include “limits on peaceful protest,” the “storage of … email records without good reason” (whatever that last means), and schools’ right “to take a child’s fingerprint without parental permission.” Clegg and his Tory allies are supposedly planning to inaugurate the “most radical redistribution of power from the state to the people for 200 years.”
Yeah, yeah, it all sounds sexy. But I remember the Reagan and Republican “Revolutions,” Bush I’s “no new taxes,” Clinton’s “era of big government is over,” Bush II’s “humble foreign policy,” and Obama’s “hope and change.” As for Clegg’s side of the pond, I remember Thatcher’s Hayekian rhetoric and Blair’s antiwar rhetoric.
Let’s just say I won’t be holding my breath.
If people want freedom, they should think about taking it rather than waiting for some politician to keep his promise to give it to them.
Uncle Grady Still Has a Gun
The following letter appeared in today’s Opelika-Auburn News; it’s a rejoinder to a recent reply to my “Uncle Grady” letter.
To the Editor:
Carol Robicheaux (May 15) accuses me of hubris, hypocrisy, and naivety for my preference for voluntary modes of social organization over coercive ones – as though personal attacks and name-calling constituted a refutation of my position. Can’t we discuss differences of opinion in a more grownup fashion?
Robicheaux seems to think that in criticizing taxation I am hypocritically attacking a system from which I benefit. But first, it would be rather cowardly for me to confine my criticisms only to institutions from which I do not benefit. And second, a market freed from plutocratic privilege would bring so much greater prosperity that universities could easily afford to pay their professors without recourse to tax funding.
Oddly, Robicheaux seems to think I need reminding that the U.S. government is better than a communist dictatorship or a theocracy.
Well, of course it is. A broken leg is likewise better than a broken neck; but that’s hardly an argument in favor of breaking people’s legs.
The reason the U.S. is both freer and more prosperous than those other regimes is that it is closer to being a voluntary social order, an anarchy.
While Robicheaux recognizes that government is “made up of people just like us,” she writes as though it is really made up instead of magical super-people, since she implies that ordinary people would be unable to perform tasks like road maintenance, food inspection, college instruction, and police protection without rulers giving orders.
As for Robicheaux’s questions about how such services would be provided, if she is sincerely interested in the large theoretical and historical literature on these subjects, the best place to start is with the Stringham and Carson books I cited in my previous letter.
Roderick T. Long
My original letter was apparently too long, so the O-A News, wonder of wonders, contacted me to ask me to reduce it, rather than cutting it themselves (though they still tinkered with it a bit more afterward). FWIW, here’s the original unedited version:
To the Editor:
Carol Robicheaux (May 15th) accuses me of “hubris,” “hypocrisy,” and “naivety” for my preference for voluntary modes of social organization over coercive ones – as though personal attacks and name-calling constituted a refutation of my position. Can’t we discuss differences of opinion in a more grownup fashion?
The charge of hubris is especially mysterious. I should think that the term would better apply to the statists, who seek to impose their will on others through governmental violence, and not to the anarchists, who oppose this.
Ms. Robicheaux seems to think that in criticizing taxation I am attacking a system from which I benefit, and that this represents hypocrisy on my part. But first, it would be rather cowardly for me to confine my criticisms only to institutions from which I do not benefit. And second, a market freed from plutocratic privilege would bring so much greater prosperity that universities like Auburn could easily afford to pay their professors without recourse to tax funding.
Oddly, Ms. Robicheaux seems to think I need reminding that the U.S. government is better than a communist dictatorship or an Iranian theocracy. Well, of course it is. A broken leg is likewise better than a broken neck; but that’s hardly an argument in favor of breaking people’s legs. The reason the U.S. is better – both freer and more prosperous – than those other regimes is that it is closer to being a voluntary social order; in other words, it’s more anarchistic. Anarchists are simply working to complete the process of liberation that the American Revolution began.
The problem with government is not that the wrong people are in it, but rather that government is a hierarchical and coercive mode of human interaction, one that involves implicitly treating other human beings as property rather than as persons.
On the one hand, Ms. Robicheaux correctly recognizes that government is “made up of people just like us,” but on the other hand she writes as though she secretly thinks that it is really made up instead of magical super-people, since she implies that ordinary people would be unable to perform tasks like road maintenance, food inspection, college instruction, and police protection without rulers giving orders.
Finally, Ms. Robicheaux asks a number of questions about how such services would be provided without government. I can scarcely address all those questions in a brief letter; but if she is sincerely interested in the large theoretical and historical literature on these subjects, the best place to start is with the Stringham and Carson books I cited in my previous letter. Information is also available online at the websites of the Molinari Institute, the Center for a Stateless Society, and the Alliance of the Libertarian Left.
Roderick T. Long
