Making the State Irrelevant
Posted by Kevin Carson on Nov 30, 2009 in Commentary • 8 commentsThere’s a lot of debate in libertarian circles on such things as the value and proper role of electoral politics, and whether we should attempt to change the laws from within the system. On one email discussion list I frequent, the LeftLibertarian2 yahoo group, such a debate was recently sparked by Michael Bindner of Christian Left, who argued for the necessity of one big movement of libertarians and decentralists—in order, among other things, to realistically address the existence of the state, and to achieve liberty for everybody instead of leaving some behind.
On the value of political efforts as such, I’m agnostic or even mildly favorable. Running for office as an educational effort (and anybody who sees a Libertarian or Green candidacy at the national level as anything but an educational effort needs more help than I can give them) can expose the public to new ideas and encourage people to question the conventional wisdom they hear from the major party candidates. Pressure groups lobbying to scale back the most harmful kinds of state action (a good example is political action by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to scale back the digital copyright regime) can sometimes be effective. But I don’t see any sense in libertarians attempting to secure positions inside the state with a view to “fighting the system from within.” Organized effort to pressure the state from the outside and scale back oppressive laws may be worth something—so long as it’s seen as a secondary effort, a way of running interference on behalf of the counter-institutions whose building should be our primary effort.
And the focus on securing liberty primarily through political organization—organizing “one big movement” to make sure everybody is on the same page, before anyone can put one foot in front of the other—embodies all the worst faults of 20th century organizational culture. What we need, instead, is to capitalize on the capabilities of network culture. Network culture, in its essence, is stigmergic: that is, an “invisible hand” effect results from the several efforts of individuals and small groups working independently. Such independent actors may have a view to coordinating their efforts with a larger movement, and take the actions of other actors into account, but they do so without any single coordinating apparatus set over and above their independent authority. In other words, we need a movement that works like Wikipedia at its best, or like open-source product developers who independently tailor modular products to a common platform.
In my opinion the best way to change the laws, in practical terms, is through counter-institution building and through counter-economic activity outside the state’s control: in other words, to render the laws so irrelevant and unenforceable, by our efforts outside the state, that even the state must make concessions to reality.
It seems to me that statism will ultimately end, not as the result of any sudden and dramatic failure, but as the cumulative effect of a long series of little things. The costs of enculturing individuals to the state’s view of the world, and of dissuading a large enough majority of people from disobeying when they’re pretty sure they’re not being watched, will result in a death of a thousand cuts. More and more of the state’s activities, from the perspective of those running things, will just cost more (in terms not only of money but of just plain mental aggravation) than they’re worth. IOW, the decay of ideological hegemony and the decreased feasibility of enforcement will do to the state what file-sharing is doing to the RIAA.
There’s even the real possibility that, even before the total costs become absolutely prohibitive from the standpoint of a net benefit to using the political means over the economic, the elites running things will be eaten from the inside out by a loss of morale. Roderick Long, of the Molinari Institute, further suggests that before it reaches that point, the elites will probably become divided among themselves.
The most cost-effective “political” effort is simply making people understand that they don’t need anyone’s permission to be free. Start telling them right now that the law is unenforceable, and disseminating knowledge as widely as possible on the most effective ways of breaking it. Publicize examples of ways we can live our lives the way we want, with institutions of our own making, under the radar of the state’s enforcement apparatus: local currency systems, free clinics, ways to protect squatter communities from harrassment, and so on. Educational efforts to undermine the state’s moral legitimacy, educational campaigns to demonstrate the unenforceability of the law, and efforts to develop and circulate means of circumventing state control, are all things best done on a stigmergic basis.
ok.
i’ll do it.
Take away the state and another large and powerful entity will take its place. More than likely, that will be the Corporations. You can pledge allegiance to the USA or you can pledge allegiance to Time/Warner. Which of those two do you think is going to be interested in preserving your way of life?
Well, homeless guy, I’ve argued repeatedly and consistently, with considerable effort to back it up, that the state is the main reason corporations like Time-Warner are able to survive in the first place. Giant corporations are dependent on massive government subsidies and massive government protections from competition (including regulatory cartels and “intellectual property”) for their very survival. The main thing the U.S. government does now, under both Democrats and Republicans, is serve the interests of the large corporations. Getting a politically viable supermajority of the whole society on the same page to change this will be far more costly (not to say impossible) than simply finding ways to live our lives outside the corporate-state nexus and starve both the government and the big corporations.
If Obama couldn’t get his agenda passed with the largest Democratic majority in 40 years and sixty seats in the Senate, what kind of filibuster threats and screaming townhall maniacs do you think Corporate America would bring out to thwart a repeal of (say) the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Kevin, I have to say that I’m somewhat relieved to hear you say you’re “mildly favorable” on running political campaigns, because, even as I’ve become increasingly libertarian, I’ve remained active in the Green Party. Of course, right now I think it’s too bogged down with internal bickering to have much effect, but just on principle, I know a lot of left libertarians reject political parties out of hand.
Having faced my paradox, let me touch on yours: you dismiss the idea of “one big movement,” but I know you’ve stated with some pride in the past that you are a member of the IWW, whose slogan is “one big union.” As a Wobbly myself, I have to say that I like my fellow Wobblies a lot, but I can’t seem to work up much enthusiasm for the organization per se. I belong to the second largest chapter in the country (not that I go to meetings), and it’s so small it suspended meetings for most of this last year. I’m much more enthusiastic about their/our workplaces, which are largely worker cooperatives.
And now, a question: you clearly have a lot of hope that the state will wither away, but I don’t see much sign of it. Granted, it needs constant shoring up, but each time it does, it grants itself a bit more power than it had before. Don’t the last eight years show that people, by and large, accept an ever-encroaching government? Sure, there are counter-examples, but they are still conspicuous by their uncommonness.
Steve, I don’t think spreading viral disobedience by itself would be enough, all other things being equal. But I believe we’re entering a unique period when a “perfect storm” of mutually reinforcing terminal crises are making the system materially unsustainable. They include the crisis of overaccumulation finally coming home to roost once and for all with the failure of financialization, the revolution in cheap miniaturized machinery exacerbating the crisis of overaccumulation, Peak Oil destroying the basis for long supply-distribution chains and globalization, the effect of the digital-network revolution on proprietary culture, and the novel contributions of network culture as a vehicle for resistance. All these things taken together don’t by any means inevitably result in statelessness. But they imply a serious hollowing out of the old centralized states, and a radical relocalization of the old corporate economy that depended on such states.
Agree with you Kevin 100% and I reiterate your point about excessive corporate dominance being the result of the state’s presence NOT absence.
I would think, from my experience, that one can make the state irrelevant by being willing and persistent to call forth their inability to prove their claim.
For an example, see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E1hDaBWPhc
If you want more, the channel is full of examples.
Thanks
NCfraudandcorruption
So Bindner wants to centralize the decentralists? That sounds oxymoronic. “Individualists of the world, unite!” Whatever you get through such efforts, if not outright failure, is probably not decentralist.
Vanquishing government is indeed a coordination problem. The government wants a monopoly on coordination. Cheap information technology may allow coordination to happen cheaper in decentralized ways. In the end, David Brin’s “transparent society” may be what ends government, when citizens find that they don’t need it. So yes, stigmergic acquisition and use of information.
In the meantime, government is also using technology to spy on citizens, and its stranglehold on lower and higher education to spin its interpretation on the information that citizens may be getting even through uncontrolled channels. Breaking that stranglehold on “Truth” might be the next step towards dissolving government. The recent ClimateGate affair makes it blatant that official Climate “Science” is bunk and only a scam to raise taxes towards a Global Government; it will be interesting to see how stigmergic information (aka blogs) will or won’t manage to turn the tides on this global scam…