Society versus the State
Posted by Kevin Carson on Jan 22, 2010 in Commentary • 13 commentsIn trying to explain how things might work in a stateless society, anarchists usually point out that opposition to the state does not mean opposition to cooperation or organization. In trying to explain anarchism to non-anarchists, anarchists describe the ways that people can cooperate voluntarily to defend themselves against aggression and achieve positive common goals.
The non-anarchist’s first response, in most cases, is “But aren’t you just reinventing the wheel? If lots of people organize themselves into a cooperative organization to restrain aggressors and carry out social projects, isn’t that just government by another name?”
Well, no, it really isn’t. The main principle that distinguishes voluntary organization under anarchy from the state is that anarchists regard cooperative groupings, including groupings of a majority of people in a community, as being bound by the same moral principles that govern individuals. An individual has the right to defend himself against aggression, and to use what rightfully belongs to him in service to his goals. Groups of more than one person have the right to associate voluntarily to defend one another against violence, when their neighbors request it, and to associate voluntarily to use their resources to promote common ends. But such group actions are simply extensions of the individual’s right, and claim no rights, powers or moral authority over and above what the individual possesses—even when the group constitutes most members of a community.
Anarchists believe that groups of people can rightfully exercise only those powers that are delegated to them by individuals; and individuals cannot delegate to any group, including the community, powers and rights which they do not themselves possess as individuals.
The state, on the other hand, claims moral authority on behalf of the community, over and above the moral basis on which individuals exercise their rights, and claims powers as representative of the community that are beyond the lawful right of any individual or private grouping of individuals.
The state claims, in particular, a police power to initiate force—to coerce peaceful non-aggressors—when it’s necessary to promote the “general welfare” or “public good.”
Many of the state’s present functions are things that would have to be done in a peaceful, free society, on the basis of voluntary cooperation. When postal carriers deliver the mail, or cops prevent murder and robbery, they’re doing things that would be done in a free society. And when this society is transformed into a free society, there may well be some organizational continuity between the present institutional arrangements for doing such things and the arrangements of the anarchist society.
So what would be necessary to transform government institutions into free ones?? Eliminate their powers to initiate force against non-aggressors. First, eliminate the funding of their operations by compulsory taxation, and second, eliminate their power to compel people to consume their services. With those criteria met, the “organization formerly known as the state” might continue to provide protection and fire service, and to organize voluntary sick and unemployment benefits, old age pensions, and the like. It might even continue to provide services to a majority of the community on a voluntary basis, as a consumer cooperative, and be governed by a “town meeting” of subscribers and a board of selectmen.
That makes sense, in fact, because services like police and fire protection are arguably private monopolies: given the capital outlays required for dissatisfied customers to start a competing service, it might well be cost-effective instead to stage a “hostile takeover” and install new management on the board of selectmen.
I couldn’t call myself an anarchist because I still see some role for a state, but I do believe the state is far too intrusive, takes too much upon itself and simply by existing reduces self-sufficiency, damages individual initiative and normally makes things worse not better.
Some time ago I developed an interest in what I called at the time ‘practical anarchism – in other words behaving as if the state wasn’t there and creating the conditions and organisations needed to make that, so far as possible, a reality. I’m not against utopianism. In fact:
“We should be, without hesitation or embarrassment, utopians. At the end of the twentieth century it is the only acceptable political option, morally speaking.” (Norman Geras)
From my own blog on these matters:
http://ibanda.blogs.com/panchromatica/2008/05/a-strategy-for-moving-towards-minimal-government.html
http://ibanda.blogs.com/panchromatica/2008/03/the-barrel-of-a.html
Thanks, Ian–your description of practical anarchism sounds exactly like what I’m trying to get at.
The posts were great. I think the guy at Slacktivist sounded a bit naive (he’d do well to read the George Carlin “big club” routine and a bit less of his old high school civics books. Believing that the citizenry can concertedly scrutinize and fine-tune government legislation, as if they actually own the country, is what’s utopian.
Kevin, thank you. People often forget the power of Corporations are not democratic, you know.their own communities. I’m especially optimistic regarding “community policing” initiatives (the real ones, not the DEA program).
Ian, “behaving as if the state wasn’t there” is only possible if you’re privileged enough to actually ignore and avoid the state.
Fully 1/3 of black U.S. males living today are or have been imprisoned, and half the U.S. black population has been involved with the state justice system in some way (Robert Jensen, The Heart of Whiteness). A Pew Hispanic Center poll showed that 41% of Hispanic adult citizens feared that a friend or family member would be deported (Richard Nadler, “At What Cost?” ). Do you think that “practical anarchism” is practical for people of color?
Women, LGBT people, and poor people also are and have been victims of institutional aggression and oppression by the state. Do you think that “practical” anarchism is practical for these folks?
Crap! That second sentence should read “People often forget the power of their own communities.” Sorry!
Thanks, postnationalist. One of the things I’m hopeful of is that counter-organization is rapidly reducing the threshold of privilege needed to ignore the state. By ignoring the state, I mean (and I suspect Ian does also) not so much ostentateously flouting its rules, as finding ways to operate below its radar. And as capital outlays for supporting a comfortable lifestyle outside the corporate economy plummet, and the technical potential for using darknets to evade surveillance mushrooms, I think operating outside the state’s notice will become more and more feasible.
I think Jeffrey St. Clair’s Counterpunch article Poison Letters, that I cced Kevin Carson about the other day, may be relevant to the whole practical anarchism thing. Of course, that article is taking all that as a bad thing and reading “threats” and “violence” into it rather than blocking tactics. The original Boycotts may have made Captain Boycott suffer incidentally; however, they weren’t about that but rather about making it impossible for him to do his job cost effectively. And I have elsewhere mentioned the Irish political tactic of join and sabotage [the formal political process] within a wider strategy that didn’t confine itself to the formal channels provided, ones that were intended to provide a safety valve without effecting change on the fundamentals.
Kevin has it right – I’m talking about ‘keeping below the radar’. I do recognise the problems faced by many groups, and that at certain times you need to stand up, but even then there are opportunities that don’t involve outright up-front oppositional tactics. In South Africa black churches provided a focus for a lot of undercover information exchange using Bulletin Board technology pre-internet. The sort of micro enterprises supported by the Grameen bank enable at least some control of your own destiny.
“Building the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.” – the Wobblies didn’t really have much direct influence in Europe, but that organising principle still applies I think.
A post from Kevin post back in 2005 covers much of what I have in mind.
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/03/building-structure-of-new-society.html
Kevin,
This article clarifies the difference between consensual and coercive organization better than any similarly-sized piece I can think of. I hope you don’t mind me making a pamphlet out of it.
Not at all, Darian, and thanks for the compliment!
Darian is right, Kevin. This is destined to become a key introductory text for sharing with non-anarchists.
I’m reminded of the “United States of America” organization from Stephenson’s Snow Crash.
I knew something rang a bell in my memory:
http://www.panarchy.org/spencer/ignore.state.1851.html
§ 1. As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the state – to relinquish its protection and to refuse paying toward its support. It is self-evident that in so behaving he in no way trenches upon the liberty of others, for his position is a passive one, and while passive he cannot become an aggressor. It is equally self-evident that he cannot be compelled to continue one of a political corporation without a breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes; and the taking away of a man’s property against his will is an infringement of his rights. Government being simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals to secure to them certain advantages, the very nature of the connection implies that it is for each to say whether he will employ such an agent or not. If anyone of them determines to ignore this mutual-safety confederation, nothing can be said except that he loses all claim to its good offices and exposes himself to the danger of maltreatment – a thing he is quite at liberty to do if he likes. He cannot be coerced into political combination without a breach of the law of equal freedom; he can withdraw from it without committing any such breach, and he has therefore a right so to withdraw.
…and Colin Ward
http://www.panarchy.org/ward/organization.1966.html
Anyone can see that there are at least two kinds of organisation. There is the kind which is forced on you, the kind which is run from above, and there is the kind which is run from below, which can’t force you to do anything, and which you are free to join or free to leave alone. We could say that the anarchists are people who want to transform all kinds of human organisation into the kind of purely voluntary association where people can pull out and start one of their own if they don’t like it.
Also Poul Anderson: Government is the only organization that’s entitled to kill you for disobeying its orders.