What is America's Political Identity?

Republic, Democracy, Oligarchy, Socialist State, Marxist-Communist State

What is the identity of the American Political system?  What system of governance do these United States live under?  What common misconceptions and fallacies do the American people promulgate?
Through defining the terms and looking at the similarities and differences in the types of governance we can define what is and is not America's political identity.

When you ask most Americans what form of government they live under you may get a mix of two different answers, either a Democracy or a Republic.  Is that the truth or is it merely what has been sold to them through the years and reinforced by fallacious propaganda?

Merriam Webster defines a Democracy as such:
1 a :  government by the people; especially :  rule of the majority
b:  a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
2 :  a political unit that has a democratic government
3 capitalized :  the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the United States
4 :  the common people, especially when constituting the source of political authority
5 :  the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges

We can see from these definitions that America holds some of this in its current form of government.  A government by the people, especially rule of the majority can be seen in the voting of issues.  These votes usually count towards a majority point where the issue will either be accepted or rejected, based off of this majority.  The second point of #1 is "a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them, directly or indirectly, through a system of REPRESENTATION, usually involving periodically held free elections" This is the basis of both a Democracy and of a Republic, which we will look at later.  With this point, we see in our current form that these representatives campaign on promises to do what the majority of the citizens have voiced.  But this also raises a question, what becomes of those that voted against this representative?  Are they equally represented and are their views expressed in government the same as those that did vote for this person?  That answer today is a resounding no, on both the people who voted in favor, and in opposition, to the representative.

Of the other definitions by Webster, we can see some semblance of American politics in them, up to the last definition.  In its current model, America's government does more to create arbitrary class distinctions and privileges.  Through laws that favor one group over others, and restrict groups to certain acts which are legal and acceptable to all others, regulations that interfere with one business while giving special exceptions to others, through licensing procedures, corporate welfare, cronyism and progressive taxation policies, this democracy is in complete contrast to this definition.

When the pundits and talking heads talk of Democracies, of furthering or installing Democracies around the world, we must ask ourselves this very important question; is the spreading of democracy in it of itself a goal of good governance of the world, or is it simply the goal of governments to be able to control the other governments by helping to erect their shrines of subservience?  Why is our government in league with others to dispose of democratically elected officials in order to replace them with others?  This seems counter-intuitive to a free election and the protection of the electoral process altogether.
This last point can be made of any Democracy; when any majority stands to take away the rights of any number of minorities, it leads to class distinctions, ruling class versus lower class battles, and a simple breakdown of governments’ ability to govern equally.

What is a Republic and why do people keep calling American Government a Republic?  Again, to Merriam-Webster for the technical definition.

1 a (1) :  a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president (2) :  a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government
b (1) :  a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law (2) :  a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government
c :  a usually specified republican government of a political unit <the French Fourth Republic>
2 :  a body of persons freely engaged in a specified activity <the republic of letters>
3 :  a constituent political and territorial unit of the former nations of Czechoslovakia, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or Yugoslavia

Not too different from a Democracy, being it allows the vote of the majority to elect their ruler and representatives.  What is not defined of course is the scope of this republic, its officers, or representatives.

So why do we say America is a Republic?  Yes there is a system of voting for representation, just as Democracies have.  And yes, it is a form of government.  But that is it, that’s as far as it goes.  So let’s throw in the term Constitutional.  Now we have a Constitutional Republic, let’s see how that differs.

The Constitution of the United States of America was adopted in 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  First it was a contract of governance of the 13 original colonies, and tied their state governments to a federal agreement of terms.  It was originally drafted with as a rule to the formation of this constitutional government, setting up practices of choosing a ruler and all other sub-rulers who would enjoy posts for specific amounts of time before having to be voted in again.  One point to remember in this is that not every citizen was allowed to vote.  Not every person was to gain representation under this constitution or in this Republic.  It wasn't until much later that people of color, former slaves, and women were allowed to use their inherent right of voicing opinions of governance.  With this information, the dynamic of what a constitutional Republic now changes.  Since only a portion of all residents and citizens are given the ability and authority to vote, the words Democracy and Republic lose their definitions.  Neither a Democracy nor a Republic, by their definitions, would be in accordance with restricting some people living under it from voting.  Currently this practice is allowed to continue; those persons who have been found guilty of certain [felonious] crimes are barred from casting ballots even though they are citizens and are affected by the type and structure of a government they have had no part to either endorse or reject.

One part of this definition stands out to me in particular more than the lot: "A body of citizens who are ENTITLED to vote".  Why does this hit me more than the rest?  Because it leaves it open on who or what "entitles" these voters.  If you notice in the definition of Democracy there is no mention of "Entitlements" being used or given.  If this definition had been worded as a right to vote for their governors, their representatives, this could be seen as a correct statement, but as it sits at entitled to vote, this is in error.  All people have a right to choose their own masters, their own government.  The wording of entitlement, it infers that it is somehow bestowed and that this ability can be taken away arbitrarily; it does not define by whom it is given or can be taken.  The natural right for a person to choose a ruler, master, king, representative, or whatever is inherent.  Logically, likewise, a man has an inherent right to reject any such governance, and choose to remain absolutely free in his own self.  Any force used to render a man under a governance that they themselves did not choose is a violation of their liberty, and a trespass of their sovereignty.

The act of government to regulate and mandate that all persons within any geographical area be subject to their authority, even when such authority is not recognized nor endorsed by that man is a transgression against this man's natural liberty.  Any reference that any form of government be structured to protect the liberty of man is in error.

Republics being a favored form of governance throughout history, it stands that they will continue to be favored, despite their inherent fault of reasoning.  If the reason for government lies in the supposed inherent evil and immorality of man, it stands that electing certain people of this evil pool will result in no better results than having no government at all.  But this belief is not recognized by the majority.  The majority believes in the power and authority placed in self-identified evil people to do self-described evils to people in the name of good, and with more admiralty than those that do these same acts on their own.

As Americans are led to believe these two types of government are the only options, and as we can see, it stands as a mixture of both definitions, a Democratic Republic, there are other forms of government that intertwine themselves and lend flavor to this mix.  Oligarchy, Communism, and even Socialism are present in the current political structure of the United States.

What is an Oligarchy, and is it good or bad?
To the public, this word is not commonly known, and is not commonly accepted as the current form of government in America.  Defined by Merriam-Webster, an Oligarchy is a government by the few, a government in which a small group exercises control, especially for corrupt and selfish purposes; also a group exercising such control or an organization under oligarchic control.  This seems to fit a little better into the mold of America's political system.  Under oligarchic rule, the minority of those in positions of power dictate rules and regulations for the majority.  Under the current American system of government, there is somewhere around 600 people that rule over 315 million; that is Oligarchy, in form.  This allows this minority power to skirt rules on themselves, and have no real threat of being removed from power, since they can simply change the rules, or decide again who can and cannot cast votes against them.

Portions of Communism and Socialism show up in the American System, though many do not realize it.
Communism and Socialism, the two big, bad, scary words almost all Americans are afraid of and confused by.  Communism affirms the removal of private property, and those goods produced in society shall be available to all as needed.  It condones the abolition of privately held companies and corporations, and assumes to give the equal share of its ownership and control to the community to decide best uses of resources and best conditions for distribution.  Webster gives differing and contradictory definitions of Communism.  It explains Communism as a theory advocating elimination of private property; a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed; a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production; and a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably.  These last two definitions being in contradiction to one another leads to the confusion of what the word and its political theory truly is.

In any system where the means and resources for production are held by singular entities, waste of resources and class disparity will grow.  In any case, a government with this sort of power will itself discover the same ends as the prior failed attempts to bring Communism to large involuntary groups.

One note I make is that, on a small scale, and in a voluntary will, Communism can and does work, so long as it remains voluntary to come into it and to leave from it.  Small communes around the world use a very similar model for their structuring and do quite well in a communal living with production for the immediate needs of the community members and their families.

On Socialism:
Socialism and Communism get intertwined and used in conjunction with one another quite often, for good reason.  By definition, they are in the same sort of governance in which the state owns and controls the means of production, and private property is abolished.  In Marxist theory, though, it lies between Capitalism, the private holding of the means of production, and full Communism, or the abolition of any singular ownership of property.  It can be said that it is just one small step from communism.
Under Marxian class theory, the United States has a large lead on its road map to full communism.  According to the ten planks originally drawn up by Karl Marx, America has incorporated its political ideologies well into the theory of Full Communism.

So where does this leave the American Political Identity?
So far as we have seen, the American form of government is quite a fair mixture of all the aforementioned structures and theories.  America may have been set up as a Republic, Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying, “A Republic, if you can keep it”, when asked after the Constitutional Convention, of what America shall be run by.  But this is quite false, as we have seen, it was set up in a Democratic Republic fashion and has slowly morphed into the beast and burden it is today.  No amount of voting will strip the power away from those who cling to it as life itself, and no amount of action short of revolution and committed resolve will banish the thought of outside governance away from the hopeful slaves and willful serfs of this country.

This leaves us at the very end of what has been feared by so many for so long; the identity that America chooses is that of which its citizens love and hate, at the very basic level, without so much a second thought to the hypocrisy they live in.

America is a mutt, a mixed bag of bad tricks, bad ideology, bad policy, bad practices, bad socially accepted behaviors and the worst form of apathy that has ever been known to mankind.

You can choose your own form of government, or YOU CAN CHOOSE TO BE FREE!

Voters, Non Voters, Law Makers and Law Enforcers

Who is to blame for the current state of affairs in the U.S.?

It is said that politics is a game(this is not something that I concede), that it is played by the voter and the politician alike, and in that, it would seem that both parties should make a win of successes and loss of the failures. But who is to be responsible for those wins and failures, who should hold blame for bad policy, theft of personal wealth,  dead citizens (through multiple means), crippling regulation and environmental destruction by way of legalese and mandated governance.

Voters.

If anyone should be to blame it should be these people who have chosen to let other people do things to them right? These people have asked that their own affairs and that of all others should be up for governance by those few who seek to be elected. It can be said that without voters the will of the majority would not be known and therefore tyranny would be rampant, but what is to be said that tyranny is not already rampant on those who disagree with the majority, or those that recognize their own right of self governance? It can also be said that without the voters, those officials who seek to rule over others would not be subject to popular opinion or have the approval to attain those positions, but then what do we make of those positions of governance that do not require the voters to fill? It is said that the voter is the ultimate tool to remove bad politicians, but they are also the fault to those bad politicians having power to execute bad policy.

If the voter is to be held accountable for their actions of tyranny over dissenters, for those actions by their politician of choice that results in the loss of freedom, life or the ability to live in accordance with one’s own responsibility, then it must be concluded that without the voters at least some instances that make up current affairs could be or would be avoided altogether. Without the majority to interfere with the choices and decisions of those others, natural state of man would be held until some person or persons tried to rule with another form of governance that does not require the voice of the people to be enacted.

Would it be better to rid ourselves of voting altogether? Some would say yes and others no.

On the “Yes” side, the actions that lead to politicians using power to decide on policies, make and continue wars, regulate peaceful interactions or actions of people, could not come about through representative governments, or ones run from a democratic value. On the “No” side, there is the openness of what would replace what is currently in place. That void could be taken over by something far worse, or it can be not taken over at all, leading the way to a more anarchic world, one where the social responsibility and responsibility is held to every person instead of transferred to some central organization to be used on all person inside a geographical location by mandate, force, or coercion. It is this fear of the unknown possibilities of human action that keeps a lot of people from entertaining such ideas of relinquishing control from governments and turned to their own interactions between people, their own morals, and their own actions.

Voting transfers the power of the individual to the collective agent (politician) that, in theory, is supposed to recognize and relay the wishes of the voters to the central government body they inhabit to create policy that adheres to the basic conditions for which they have been elected. Voting is said also to remove the responsibility of the voter and of policy that politicians create with the vested power by the voters. It creates, also in theory, a separation of what is done and what should be done by the simply collective voice of those who have voted in favor of the specific politician in power. That being said leads to another point on democracy in American politics and in general political theory. The majority vote is decidedly the winner of the contest and the wishes of those that are included in that majority are furthered in effect as wishes of ALL those in that general geographical area, but this is not so. Those voters who have voiced opposition to the elected candidate have not had their wishes furthered and in fact may be in stark contrast to what is being proposed or executed by the politician of the majority. This leaves us with a minority that is having policy being made and regulations and mandates being passed that hinder or transgress the minority. In this theory we see that even with a majority voice in a democratic system of governance, some still lose their individual morals or ideas to the overwhelming odds of collective politics.

Politicians

On the other end of the fiasco of central governments imposed on the US people are those men and women who seek power to create laws, regulations, create hoops, create issues, intervene in the very private affairs and relationships of people, to take from them their wealth as some tribute to their power, and to wage conflicts in and outside the invisible boundaries of their supposed power. It is the politician that creates the policy for which the citizen must adhere to or face punishment. It is the politician that makes his livelihood from taxation, the forced removal of wealth from private citizens. It is the politician that creates the mandates and laws that dictate the actions of the people.

Politicians are those people who have ideas of being able to control and mandate the people in their representative area into the laws and policy they put forth. Politicians make up a small group in power to control the larger mass of citizens. They use political power and power vested to them by the voters to try and regulate and systematize the actions of individuals whether they agree with the policy or law or even with that person having the power in the first place.

Democracy has given the US a system of control by majority, claimed by a small group of power hungry individuals and delusional voting individuals to give way to a standard of compulsion and decrees. It is this violation of individuals that democracy fails on every level.

But can we blame the politician? Of course we can blame the politician. Without the want to rule over someone else or some group of people the system is gone, the chains of perpetual imbalance of free versus serf, tribute payment versus voluntary contribution, war versus defense of property, and all other issues the state holds monopolies on vanish to be accomplished by free people or cast aside as not of importance or value.

Without the ability to govern being granted by popular decision these people would either not have a job with those capabilities or would grant them by more violent and less voluntary means. It can be said that if the voter did not have a person to vote for, the same ends could occur, either rule by self or despotic takeover and complete tyranny of citizens of the area would be made possible. This is not to say that without our state of faux democracy we would be ruled by tyrants or brutal regimes, since in their own ways both these things happen under democracy, but that it is only another option after democracy has ceased.  I do not want to be taken as having endorsed democracy in any way, it is my intention to live only at the will of myself and for the sake or purpose of any other in coercive fashion or mandated compulsion. This does however leave open the ability that all others make this choice for themselves and that each individual's idea of governance cannot interfere with or proscribe itself onto any other in any involuntary manner.

The Law Enforcers

Another area to look into is those people that enforce the laws and compulsion of the state and its agents. Those that use state sanctioned power and authority to dispel morality and true justice at every turn. It is the Law Enforcer, any enforcer at all, that commits the force and aggression in the name and tribute of the state. It is through the state commission of theft that these agents are paid their wages, and it is through decree they achieve their ends. The action committed by these enforcers is what is felt at the individual level, it is this that we see most visibly when a law that is unjust is enforced and a peaceful action with no victim at all is quelled and a member of the whole makeup of society is transgressed and violated himself, by harassment, compulsory forfeiture of wealth, kidnapping and/or imprisonment by these enforcers.

We could say that without the enforcers the states decrees, their mandates and laws, their regulation, prohibitions, and intervention into the lives of others could not take place. I always say that to some degree when you are an agent of the state (in any capacity) you have at least some small area of agreement with what is taking place and are endorsing these transgressions by your mere employment and justification for the state’s action by completing their actions.

The permit approvers, the police, the tax collectors, the bureaucrats that assign themselves this special status by employment have only to say no to the oppressive state, to cast themselves as an individual of their own governance and to return to the role of productive producer instead of a political and economic bloodsucker.

The Non-Voter

A lot of blame is put on those of us who choose not to participate in the actions of government any longer. Those who recognize the immorality and inconsistency of the state and their actions are often labeled as the real problem and have simply given up, not trying or flat out totally to blame for everything that has happened or will happen. The Non-Voter is the man or woman who has taken their consent away from the state, they have said that they will no longer allow their will to be decided by whatever person had the most vote or the policy endorsed by the majority. Non-Voters vary in reasoning so there is no use trying to place them into a specific mold or reason for their abstinence.

The Non-Voter is without a doubt not to be blamed for the actions of politicians or their results. Maybe one can say that the Non-Voter is to blame that bad politicians are able to do bad things because the non-voter did not help another candidate to win. But in that defense non-voters, generally speaking from my own experience, recognize that no matter which person fills that space they are there for the power over other people, they want to be in control and believe they have everything worked out how it should be. The non-voter recognizes, again from my own experience, that the institution of government is the key problem with a lot of the brutal actions we see in humanity everyday, and the removal of that institution would benefit all, but at last we cannot make that choice for others.

Whenever freedom is reduced to permissions from state offices after fines, permits and threats of punishment if not done in accordance you can be sure government is the disease and not the cure. Voting for politicians is one way to subscribe to the idea that someone else knows what is good for you and your neighbors and will give it to you whether you agree with the means or not. The enforcers of bad laws, regulations and restrictions hold their own blame, for if they were to choose to not enforce bad or immoral laws and legislation, to only interfere with human actions if those actions reduce or eliminate the rights of another person or persons. The politician, power hungry as they come, aims to be the arbitrator of morals and justice to the mass populace with or without consent or justification beyond their own want or will.

Ferguson on Fire: The State Still Wins

After Tuesday night’s Missouri Grand Jury decision to not indict Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown the streets filled with people. Protesters, Police, News Journalists, even the state National Guard was called in prior to the verdict being read, they were all out in full force. The following riots sparked by feelings of injustice, racism, and oppression of lower income individuals, and the rise in police brutality cases across the country quickly raged out of control.  As the live streams and news streams were coming in (I avoided social media for the most part) I had a few thoughts on the whole matter, and here I will explain those thoughts.

(1) A Person Is Dead, and no matter the outcome of the fight Officer Darren Wilson and Michael Brown were engaged in, it seems likely this end could not be avoided. When the life of any person is taken in such a manner it is always a loss for someone. Michael Brown had family, friends, neighbors, people who cared about him, and the same is true of Officer Wilson, this fact cannot be refuted. Thinking about this it seems that it is forgotten by the protesters and opposition to the refusal to indict Wilson.

(2) Protesters are misguided and wrong. The protests that began after Brown's death and now brought back to Ferguson are destructive to the wrong ends. It makes no logical sense to attack private property, to loot, set fire to or destroy the businesses and homes, cars and other property of other citizens in the community. It makes your “cause” unworthy if you take from others and do not address the root cause of the strife or reason for discontent. If these protesters had surrounded police stations, fire stations, city hall, and other city properties, and had refused to let them operate as usual, this could have turned out well. If these protesters had staged a protest (not riots) at the supreme court building this would have been symbolic. The rampant destruction of private property is just the continuation of violations on those that could have been of some source of support for the cause. I also pointed out on Twitter that with the destruction of private property running rampant in the area libertarians (and anyone else who hold a strict adherence to not do damage to others property) would do well to distance their support for these mobs. The destruction of private property will accomplish nothing but more victims of this tragedy, where as the dismantling on the government will free the people from its oppression.

(3) Mistakes were made. The city of Ferguson decided to wait until dark, 9pm their time, to release the verdict, even though it had been made earlier in the day. This was, in my mind, intentional to attain camera effect. If their statement had been made earlier in the day, after it was read in court, this would have allowed business owners to stay at their stores to protect them, this is a two edged sword though, as they could have then become victims of the rioters. This decision also guaranteed that the maximum amount of people were not at work, but in the streets. It allowed better cinematography in that fire is more visually exciting when contrasted to the dark.

(4) The State fails at it’s own monopoly. As we see from this and the prior riots (directly after the shooting) the Ferguson police cannot and will not protect and serve the people but are engaging the protesters head on. Firing rubber bullets, tear gas, rolling out armored trucks they are less concerned with the city as a whole and more concerned with directly combating the mass of people. Rakkur Crowley said it best this morning on Facebook, “The looting in Ferguson is just more evidence that the State fails abysmally in its’ claim to be the monopoly provider of property protection.”

(5) The State still wins. As I pointed out last night on Twitter, these riots set in motion the future and continuation of police militarization in these areas and across the country. When riots such as this happen it is common for the police forces to request help from other agencies, local, state and federal. This gives the impression that the department is ill equipped to handle it’s own populace. In the next few weeks, months and years watch as the Ferguson Police Department becomes more and more militarized.  And watch as the funding is poured into the “public safety” areas of that local government. The State will continue to tax these people, most likely at higher rates to offset damages and afford new services. The state will have a reason to impose new restrictions on the populace. The state will have renewed faith from some that they are the protectors of civility and social order, because in the minds of some, order comes from mandate, and social structures are built by government, that all aspects of their lives can and should be controlled “for the greater good”.

(6) Racism is still alive and well. This is brought to my mind by an image of a young black woman holding a sign that reads “Black Lives Matter”. Without going into a whole diatribe on the fact that “reverse racism” does not exist and is merely doublespeak, for a person to claim equality under law or circumstance the abstinence of using classification or separation by gender, race, creed, wealth and any other differentiation must be present. By claiming that Black Lives Matter she is making a statement that she believes that others do not hold this true. But why not just say, “Lives Matter, Stop Killing People”. Better defined as the root of the problem this statement shows a true belief in the equal treatment in all, not defined or restricted to only certain groups or classifications of people.

The entire situation is a mess, and one that will not be resolved by dispersing the people, it is an emotion, a feeling, an idea, and as has been warned before, “ One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.” The fact is that Ferguson is the culmination and the expected outcome of the growing problem of police abuse and authoritative overreach, it is the expected result of the growing Police State. It is for the thousands of cases of brutality that go unaired on national television and kept from the minds and eyes of the public, it is the result of a belief that “just doing my job” is a legitimate reason for abuse. This powder keg is nothing near close to burning out.

So the takeaway from all of this is as follows. A human being is dead, that is a tragedy in of itself. The state fails to provide the service they hold a monopoly on, something they extort money for. And in the end the riots and protests that are following the Grand Jury's decision will ultimately cause the government to swell in that area and beyond. 

Also See

(*) Obama’s speech on the Grand Jury’s decision

(*) Transcripts of Grand Jury Evidence

Can Anarcho-Capitalism Work? by Lew Rockwell

Can Anarcho-Capitalism Work?

• 

NOVEMBER 14, 2014Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

TAGS Free MarketsPolitical Theory

This talk was delivered at the Costa Mesa Mises Circle on Society Without the State, November 8, 2014.

The term “anarcho-capitalism” has, we might say, rather an arresting quality. But while the term itself may jolt the newcomer, the ideas it embodies are compelling and attractive, and represent the culmination of a long development of thought.

If I had to boil it down to a handful of insights, they would be these: (1) each human being, to use John Locke’s formulation, “has a property in his own person”; (2) there ought to be a single moral code binding all people, whether they are employed by the State or not; and (3) society can run itself without central direction.

From the original property one enjoys in his own person we can derive individual rights, including property rights. When taken to its proper Rothbardian conclusion, this insight actually invalidates the State, since the State functions and survives on the basis of systematic violation of individual rights. Were it not to do so, it would cease to be the State.

In violating individual rights, the State tries to claim exemption from the moral laws we take for granted in all other areas of life. What would be called theft if carried out by a private individual is taxation for the State. What would be called kidnapping is the military draft for the State. What would be called mass murder for anyone else is war for the State. In each case, the State gets away with moral enormities because the public has been conditioned to believe that the State is a law unto itself, and can’t be held to the same moral standards we apply to ourselves.

But it’s the third of these ideas I’d like to develop at greater length. In those passages of their moral treatises dealing with economics, the Late Scholastics, particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had been groping toward the idea of laws that govern the social order. They discovered necessary cause-and-effect relationships. There was a clear connection, for example, between the flow of precious metals entering Spain from the New World on the one hand, and the phenomenon of price inflation on the other. They began to understand that these social regularities were brute facts that could not be defied by the political authority.

This insight developed into fuller maturity with the classical liberals of the eighteenth century, and the gradual emergence of economics as a full-fledged, independent discipline. This, said Ludwig von Mises, is why dictators hate the economists. True economists tell the ruler that there are limits to what he can accomplish by his sheer force of will, and that he cannot override economic law.

In the nineteenth century, Frédéric Bastiat placed great emphasis on this insight. If these laws exist, then we must study them and understand them, but certainly not be so foolish as to defy them. Conversely, he said, if there are no such laws, then men are merely inert matter upon which the State will be all too glad to impose its imprint. He wrote:

For if there are general laws that act independently of written laws, and whose action needs merely to be regularized by the latter, we must study these general laws; they can be the object of scientific investigation, and therefore there is such a thing as the science of political economy. If, on the contrary, society is a human invention, if men are only inert matter to which a great genius, as Rousseau says, must impart feeling and will, movement and life, then there is no such science as political economy: there is only an indefinite number of possible and contingent arrangements, and the fate of nations depends on the founding father to whom chance has entrusted their destiny.

The next step in the development of what would later become anarcho-capitalism was the radical one taken by Gustave de Molinari, in his essay “The Private Production of Security.” Molinari asked if the production of defense services, which even the classical liberals took for granted had to be carried out by the State, might be accomplished by private firms under market competition. Molinari made express reference to the insight we have been developing thus far, that society operates according to fixed, intelligible laws. If this is so, he said, then the provision of this service ought to be subject to the same laws of free competition that govern the production of all other goods. Wouldn’t the problems of monopoly exist with any monopoly, even the State’s that we have been conditioned to believe is unavoidable and benign?

It offends reason to believe that a well-established natural law can admit of exceptions. A natural law must hold everywhere and always, or be invalid. I cannot believe, for example, that the universal law of gravitation, which governs the physical world, is ever suspended in any instance or at any point of the universe. Now I consider economic laws comparable to natural laws, and I have just as much faith in the principle of the division of labor as I have in the universal law of gravitation. I believe that while these principles can be disturbed, they admit of no exceptions.

But, if this is the case, the production of security should not be removed from the jurisdiction of free competition; and if it is removed, society as a whole suffers a loss.

It was Murray N. Rothbard who developed the coherent, consistent, and rigorous system of thought — out of classical liberalism, American individualist anarchism, and Austrian economics — that he called anarcho-capitalism. In a career of dozens of books and thousands of articles, Rothbard subjected the State to an incisive, withering analysis, unlike anything seen before. I dedicated Against the State to this great pioneer, and dear friend.

But can it work? It is all very well to raise moral and philosophical objections to the State, but we are going to need a plausible scenario by which society regulates itself in the absence of the State, even in the areas of law and defense. These are serious and difficult questions, and glib answers will naturally be inadequate, but I want to propose at least a few suggestive ideas.

The conventional wisdom, of course, is that without a monopoly provider of these services, we will revert to the Hobbesian state of nature, in which everyone is at war with everyone else and life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” A ceaseless series of assaults of one person against another ensues, and society sinks ever deeper into barbarism.

For one thing, it’s not even clear that the logic behind Thomas Hobbes’s fears really makes any sense. As Michael Huemer points out, Hobbes posits a rough equality among human beings in that none of us is totally invulnerable. We are all potential murder victims at the hands of anyone else, he says. He likewise insists that human beings are motivated by, and indeed altogether obsessed with, self-interest.

Now suppose that were true: all we care about is our own self-interest, our own well-being, our own security. Would it make sense for us to rush out and attack other people, if we have a 50 percent chance of being killed ourselves? Even if we happen to be skilled in battle, there is still a significant chance that any attack we launch will end in our death. How does this advance our self-interest?

Hobbes likewise speaks of pre-emptive attacks, that people will attack others out of a fear that those others may first attack them. If this is true, then it’s even more irrational for people to go around attacking others: if their fellows are inclined to preemptively attack people they fear, whom would they fear more than people who go around indiscriminately attacking people? In other words, the more you attack people, the more you open yourself up to preemptive attacks by others. So here we see another reason that it makes no sense, from the point of view of the very self-interest Hobbes insists everyone is motivated by, for people to behave the way he insists they must.

As for law, history affords an abundance of examples of what we might call trickle-up law, in which legal norms develop through the course of normal human interaction and the accumulation of a body of general principles. We are inclined to think of law as by nature a top-down institution, because we confuse law with the modern phenomenon of legislation. Every year the world’s legislative bodies pour forth a staggering number of new rules, regulations, and prohibitions. We have come to accept this as normal, when in fact it is, historically speaking, an anomaly.

It was once common to conceive of law as something discovered rather than made. In other words, the principles that constitute justice and by which people live harmoniously together are derived from a combination of reflection on eternal principles and the practical application of those principles to particular cases. The idea that a legislative body could overturn the laws of contract and declare that, say, a landlord had to limit rents to amounts deemed acceptable by the State, would have seemed incredible.

The English common law, for example, was a bottom-up system. In the Middle Ages, merchant law developed without the State at all. And in the US today, private arbitration services have exploded as people and firms seek out alternatives to a government court system, staffed in many cases by political appointees, that everyone knows to be inefficient, time-consuming, and frequently unjust.

PayPal is an excellent example of how the private, entrepreneurial sector devises creative ways around the State’s incompetence in guaranteeing the inviolability of property and contract. For a long time, PayPal had to deal with anonymous perpetrators of fraud all over the world. The company would track down the wrongdoers and report them to the FBI. And nothing ever happened.

Despairing of any government solution, PayPal came up with an ingenious approach: it devised a system for preemptively determining whether a given transaction was likely to be fraudulent. This way, there would be no bad guys to be tracked down, since their criminal activity would be prevented before it could do any harm.

Small miracles like this take place all the time in the free sector of society, not that we’re encouraged to learn much about them. Recall that as the Centers for Disease Control issued false statements and inadequate protocols for dealing with Ebola, it was a Firestone company town in Liberia that did more than any public authority in Africa to provide safety and health for the local population.

There is a great deal more to be said about law and defense provision in a free society, and I discuss some of this literature at the end of Against the State. But the reason we focus on these issues in the first place is that we realize the State cannot be reformed. The State is a monopolist of aggressive violence and a massive wealth-transfer mechanism, and it is doing precisely what is in its nature to do. The utopian dream of “limited government” cannot be realized, since government has no interest in remaining limited. A smaller version of what we have now, while preferable, cannot be a stable, long-term solution. So we need to conceive of how we could live without the State or its parasitism at all.

The point of this book is to speak frankly — at times perhaps even shockingly so — in order to jolt readers out of the intellectual torpor in which the ruling class and its system of youth indoctrination have lulled them. We might have a fighting chance if most people were aware of the ideas in this book, and in our intellectual tradition generally. They would never fall for the State’s propaganda line, its apologias, its moral double standards. They would be insulted by these distortions and dissimulations.

And that’s what we do at the Mises Institute. We don’t publish “policy reports” in the vain hope that Congress will defy its own nature and pursue freedom. Every one of those policy reports winds up in the trash can. They are used to dupe the gullible into thinking the Washington think-tanks they support have influence in Washington.

Instead, we set forth the truth about the State without compromise or apology. The reason Ron Paul attracted so many young people was that they could see he was speaking to them in plain English, not politicalese. He was speaking frankly and truthfully, without regard for the lectures and hectoring he’d get for it at the hands of the media.

We’ve tried to emulate Ron’s approach — and of course, we’ve been delighted to have Ron as a Distinguished Counselor to the Institute since its inception, and as a member of our board as well. The stakes are too high for us to do anything other than speak frankly and directly about what we know to be true. It’s easy to publish toothless essays about public policy. It is harder to focus on war, the Federal Reserve, and the true nature of the State itself. But that is the path we have willingly chosen.

We hope you’ll join us.

Image source: iStockphoto.

Government according to P.J. Proudhon

To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.

To be governed is be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped,measured, numbered, assessed,licensed, authorized, admonished,prevented, forbidden, reformed,corrected, punished.

It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, be placed under contribution,drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, funded, vilified harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned,shot deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.

That is government; that is its justice, that is its morality

P.J. Proudhon 1923

Working on Thanksgiving Day? Good.

Why is it being seen as a bad thing for people to be working and businesses to be open? And why is this only aimed at retail workers?

There is growing discontent at retailers who have chosen to open their stores on Thanksgiving day this year in an effort to bring in more sales. The discontent felt by many is in response to their feeling that those retailers are taking advantage of their workers and forcing them to work these hours. Though the federal government in the US has recognized Thanksgiving as a holiday, there is not a mandate in place that requires all workers to be let off for the day, at least not yet. Unless specifically implied in an employment contract companies can require their employees to work hours that they set or days that may not be in accordance to "the norm" set by others. But this should not be seen as a bad thing.

In the theory that prices are wages and vice versa, those that are employed and work on these days are adding to the personal income while the employers are adding to their own sales numbers, cost and benefits to both.  All the parts to the market process win in this scenario. The worker earns his wage, allowing him to purchase goods. The consumer is able to buy goods, with their own wages, on an open schedule and with workers to run the transactions. The employer or business has both workers and consumers participating in the system. Allowing for both sides of the transaction the business has facilitated trade and helped a worker to earn a wage, in lieu of their labor. It really is a win-win-win situation.

They (the public at large) want employment. They want more products. They want consumerism. But they also want the ability to regulate who can work, where they can work, when they can work, and for how long they can work.
They want control over the businesses, not through market participation (or non-participation) but through the hand and fist of government. (This is a petition aimed at government workers, but others have been started to mandate holidays off for some industries, excluding some at the same time.)
They want to be able to buy their widgets, at low prices, with high wages for the workers and paradisaical hours and schedules without the hindrance of anyone else's wishes to be inconvenienced  by unopened stores or working late night hours. Quite Utopian a task to regulate such a feat to not impose on the wishes of others, or to not have your own wishes imposed upon.

It really is no surprise that there is the feelings of disgust and opposition towards holiday working hours and they are not aimed at the workers themselves directly,  they are aimed at the economic position of the worker, the business and the shopper alike. All of these work in unison to create the market, and the more regulation in the way hinders one or all of these three in some way.

Now this is only addressing the retail stores that are to be open on Thanksgiving day but take this a bit further in the thought process and we see what others miss. If we were to say that the retailers were to be forced to not open on specific days, holidays in fact, why would we not extend this same idea to all facets of service to others. Bus Stations, Airports, Rescue Workers, maybe even to force prostitutes and drug dealers to refrain from work by decree, all areas of services to others should be  In the name of mandated fairness that so many call for why should any of these other services be able to operate? Air travel should come to a halt for 24 hours, Policemen and women able to spend the day with their families, prostitutes forced to not take clients for one full day. If this idea is really in the name of allowing those workers in retail to have time with their family on any given day, this extended idea should be of no debate, it is after all in the name of the family structure and fairness. So we have to look at the long reaching effects of what is being proposed. Gas stations closed, toll booths and the roads the are on closed. Grocery stores closed. Not being able to run and get that one last piece for a joyful holiday all because working on holidays had been regulated away.  Every business following suit of retailers and being forced to close for one whole day.

If We Quit Voting by Frank Chodorov 1945

New York in midsummer is measurably more miserable than any other place in this world — and should be comparable to the world for which all planners are headed. Why New Yorkers, otherwise sane, should choose to parboil their innards in a political campaign during this time of the year is a question that comes under the head of man's inscrutable propensity for self-punishment. And if a fellow elects to let the whole thing pass him by, some socially conscious energumen is bound to sweat him with a lecture on civic duty, like the citizenes who came at me.

For 25 years my dereliction has been known to my friends, and more than one has undertaken to set me straight; out of these arguments came a solid defense for my nonvoting position, so that the lady in question was well parried with practiced retorts. I pointed out, with many instances, that though we have had candidates and platforms and parties and campaigns in abundance, we have had an equivalent plenitude of poverty and crime and war. The regularity with which the perennial promise of "good times" wound up in depression suggested the incompetence of politics in economic affairs. Maybe the good society we have been voting for lay some other way; why not try another fork in the road, the one pointing to individual self-improvement, particularly in acquiring a knowledge of economics? And so on.

There was one question put to me by my charming annoyer that I deftly sidestepped, for the day was sultry and the answer called for some mental effort. The question: "What would happen if we quit voting?"

If you are curious about the result of noneating you come upon the question of why we eat. So, the query put to me by the lady brings up the reason for voting. The theory of government by elected representatives is that these fellows are hired by the voting citizenry to take care of all matters relating to their common interests. However, it is different from ordinary employment in that the representative is not under specific orders, but is given blanket authority to do what he believes desirable for the public welfare in any and all circumstances, subject to constitutional limitations. In all matters relating to public affairs the will of the individual is transferred to the elected agent, whose responsibility is commensurate with the power thus invested in him.

It is this transference of power from voter to elected agents that is the crux of republicanism. The transference is well-nigh absolute. Even the constitutional limitations are not so in fact, since they can be circumvented by legal devices in the hands of the agents. Except for the tenuous process of impeachment, the mandate is irrevocable. For the abuse or misuse of the mandate the only recourse left to the principals, the people, is to oust the agents at the next election. But when we oust the rascals, do we not, as a matter of course, invite a new crowd? It all adds up to the fact that by voting them out of power, the people put the running of their community life into the hands of a separate group, upon whose wisdom and integrity the fate of the community rests.

All this would change if we quit voting. Such abstinence would be tantamount to this notice to politicians: since we as individuals have decided to look after our affairs, your services are no longer needed. Having assumed social power we must, as individuals, assume social responsibility — provided, of course, the politicians accept their discharge. The job of running the community would fall on each and all of us. We might hire an expert to tell us about the most improved firefighting apparatus, or a manager to look after cleaning the streets, or an engineer to build us a bridge; but the final decision, particularly in the matter of raising funds to defray costs, would rest with the townhall meeting. The hired specialists would have no authority other than that necessary for the performance of their contractual duties; coercive power, which is the essence of political authority, would be exercised, if necessary, only by the committee of the whole.

"The regularity with which the perennial promise of 'good times' wound up in depression suggested the incompetence of politics in economic affairs."

There is some warrant for the belief that a better social order would ensue when the individual is responsible for it and, therefore, responsive to its needs. He no longer has the law or the lawmakers to cover his sins of omission; need of the neighbors' good opinion will be sufficient compulsion for jury duty and no loopholes in a draft law, no recourse to "political pull" will be possible when danger to his community calls him to arms. In his private affairs, the now-sovereign individual will have to meet the dictum of the marketplace: produce or you do not eat; no law will help you. In his public behavior he must be decent or suffer the sentence of social ostracism, with no recourse to legal exoneration. From a law-abiding citizen he will be transmuted into a self-respecting man.

"Would chaos result? No, there would be order, without law to disturb it."

But, let us define chaos. Is it not disharmony resulting from social friction? When we trace social friction to its source do we not find that it seminates in a feeling of unwarranted hurt, or injustice? Then chaos is a social condition in which injustice obtains. Now, when one man may take, by law, what another man has put his labor into, we have injustice of the keenest kind, for the denial of a man's right to possess and enjoy what he produces is akin to a denial of life. Yet the power to confiscate property is the first business of politics. We see how this is so in the matter of taxation; but greater by far is the amount of property confiscated by monopolies, all of which are founded in law.

While this economic basis of injustice has been lost in our adjustment to it, the resulting friction is quite evident. Most of us are poor in spite of our constant effort and known ability to produce an abundance; the incongruity is aggravated by a feeling of hopelessness. But the keenest hurt arises from the thought that the wealth we see about us is somehow ours by right of labor, but is not ours by right of law. Resentment, intensified by bewilderment, stirs up a reckless urge to do something about it. We demand justice; we have friction. We have strikes and crimes and bankruptcy and mental unbalances. And we cheat our neighbors, and each seeks for himself a legal privilege to live by another's labor. And we have war. Is this a condition of harmony or of chaos?

Though the citizen's private musket was seldom used for the protection of life and property, its presence promised swift and positive justice, from which no legal chicanery offered escape, and its loud report announced the dignity of decency. Every crime was committed against the public, not the law, and therefore the public made an ado about it. Mistakes were made, to be sure, for human judgment is ever fallible; but, until the politician came, there was no deliberate malfeasance or misfeasance; until laws came, there were no violations, and the code of human decency made for order.In the frontier days of our country there was little law, but much order, for the affairs of the community were in the hands of the citizenry. Although fiction may give an opposite impression, it is a fact that there was less per capita crime to take care of then than there is now when law pervades every turn and minute of our lives. What gave the West its wild and woolly reputation was the glamorous drama of intense community life. Everybody was keenly interested in the hanging of a cattle rustler; it was not done in the calculated quiet of a prison, with the dispatch of a mechanical system. The railriding of a violator of townhall dicta had to be the business of the town prosecutor, who was everybody.

So, if we should quit voting for parties and candidates, we would individually reassume responsibility for our acts and, therefore, responsibility for the common good. There would be no way of dodging the verdict of the marketplace; we would take back only in proportion to our contribution. Any attempt to profit at the expense of a neighbor or the community would be quickly spotted and as quickly squelched, for everybody would recognize a threat to himself in the slightest indulgence of injustice. Since nobody would have the power to enforce monopoly conditions, none would obtain. Order would be maintained by the rules of existence, the natural laws of economics.

That is, if the politicians would permit themselves to be thus ousted from their positions of power and privilege.

I doubt it.

Remember that the proposal to quit voting is basically revolutionary; it amounts to a shifting of power from one group to another, which is the essence of revolution. As soon as the nonvoting movement got up steam, the politicians would most assuredly start a counterrevolution. Measures to enforce voting would be instituted; fines would be imposed for violations, and prison sentences would be meted out to repeaters.

"As soon as the nonvoting movement got up steam, the politicians would most assuredly start a counterrevolution."

It is a necessity for political power, no matter how gained, to have the moral support of public approval, and suffrage is the most efficient scheme for registering it; notice how Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin insisted on having ballots cast. In any republican government, even ours, only a fraction of the populace votes for the successful candidate, but that fraction is quantitatively impressive; it is this appearance of overwhelming sanction that supports him in the exercise of political power. Without it he would be lost.

Propaganda, too, would bombard this passive resistance to statism; not only that put out by the politicians of all parties — the coalition would be as complete as it would be spontaneous — but also the more effective kind emanating from seemingly disinterested sources. All the monopolists, all the coupon-clipping foundations, all the tax-exempt eleemosynary institutions — in short, all the "respectables" — would join in a howling defense of the status quo.

We would be told most emphatically that unless we keep on voting away our power to responsible persons, it would be grabbed by irresponsible ones; tyranny would result.

That is probably true, seeing how since the beginning of time men have sought to acquire property without laboring for it.

The answer lies, as it always has, in the judicious use of private artillery. On this point a story, apocryphal no doubt, is worth telling. When Napoleon's conquerors were considering what to do with him, a buck-skinned American allowed that a fellow of such parts might be handy in this new country and ought to be invited to come over. As for the possibility of a Napoleonic regime being started in America, the recent revolutionist dismissed it with the remark that the musket with which he shot rabbits could also kill tyrants. There is no substitute for human dignity.

But the argument is rather specious in the light of the fact that every election is a seizure of power. The balloting system has been defined as a battle between opposing forces, each armed with proposals for the public good, for a grant of power to put these proposals into practice. As far as it goes, this definition is correct; but when the successful contestant acquires the grant of power toward what end does he use it — not theoretically but practically? Does he not, with an eye to the next campaign, and with the citizens' money, go in for purchasing support from pressure groups? Whether it is by catering to a monopoly interest whose campaign contribution is necessary to his purpose, or to a privilege-seeking labor group, or to a hungry army of unemployed or of veterans, the over-the-barrel method of seizing and maintaining political power is standard practice.

"The power to confiscate property is the first business of politics."

This is not, however, an indictment of our election system. It is rather a description of our adjustment to conquest. Going back to beginnings — although the process is still in vogue, as in Manchuria, or more recently in the Baltic states — when a band of freebooters developed an appetite for other people's property they went after it with vim and vigor. Repeated visitations of this nature left the victims breathless, if not lifeless, and propertyless to boot. So, as men do when they have no other choice, they made a compromise. They hired one gang of thieves to protect them from other gangs, and in time the price paid for such protection came to be known as taxation. The tax gatherers settled down in the conquered communities, possibly to make collections certain and regular, and as the years rolled on a blend of cultures and of bloods made of the two classes one nation. But the system of taxation remained after it had lost its original significance; lawyers and professors of economics, by deft circumlocution, turned tribute into "fiscal policy" and clothed it with social good.

Nevertheless, the social effect of the system was to keep the citizenry divided into two economic groups: payers and receivers. Those who lived without producing became traditionalized as "servants of the people," and thus gained ideological support. They further entrenched themselves by acquiring sub-tax-collecting allies; that is, some of their group became landowners, whose collection of rent rested on the law-enforcement powers of the ruling clique, and others were granted subsidies, tariffs, franchises, patent rights, monopoly privileges of one sort or another. This division of spoils between those who wield power and those whose privileges depend on it is succinctly described in the expression, "the state within the state."

Thus, when we trace our political system to its origin, we come to conquest. Tradition, law, and custom have obscured its true nature, but no metamorphosis has taken place; its claws and fangs are still sharp, its appetite as voracious as ever. In the light of history it is not a figure of speech to define politics as the art of seizing power; and its present purpose, as of old, is economic.

"every election is a seizure of power"

There is no doubt that men of high purpose will always give of their talents for the common welfare, with no thought of recompense other than the goodwill of the community. But so long as our taxation system remains, so long as the political means for acquiring economic goods is available, just so long will the spirit of conquest assert itself; for men always seek to satisfy their desires with the least effort. It is interesting to speculate on the kind of campaigns and the type of candidates we would have if taxation were abolished and if, also, the power to dispense privilege vanished. Who would run for office if there were "nothing in it"?

"Why should a self-respecting citizen endorse an institution grounded in thievery? For that is what one does when one votes."

Why should a self-respecting citizen endorse an institution grounded in thievery? For that is what one does when one votes. If it be argued that we must let bygones be bygones, see what we can do toward cleaning up the institution so that it can be used for the maintenance of an orderly existence, the answer is that it cannot be done; we have been voting for one "good government" after another, and what have we got? Perhaps the silliest argument, and yet the one invariably advanced when this succession of failures is pointed out, is that "we must choose the lesser of two evils." Under what compulsion are we to make such a choice? Why not pass up both of them?

To effectuate the suggested revolution all that is necessary is to stay away from the polls. Unlike other revolutions, it calls for no organization, no violence, no war fund, no leader to sell it out. In the quiet of his conscience each citizen pledges himself, to himself, not to give moral support to an unmoral institution, and on election day he remains at home. That's all. I started my revolution 25 years ago and the country is none the worse for it.