Earlier this week, tens of thousands of Americans came together — across the nation in cities large and small — for “Tea Party” protests against high taxes, profligate government spending and corporate welfare.
I say “tens of thousands” because that’s what the mainstream media says. If the St. Louis Tea Party was typical, the nationwide number was more likely “hundreds of thousands.”
The allegations of the statist left notwithstanding, I saw little indication that these events were “Republican” in nature or that they were “astro-turf” (“fake grassroots”) demonstrations. They were trans-partisan, eclectic, inclusive. They were, in a word, beautiful.
If the energy of the Tea Partiers can be rallied around a principled, populist, libertarian message, the potential for a massive shift in the political landscape is very real.
90% of the signs at the St. Louis Tea Party were anti-state — “End the Fed!” “Repudiate the Debt!” “Taxes are theft!” — and if we got 90% of what those signs asked for, we’d be 90% of the way to a stateless society.
But … Waiter! There’s a fly in my tea!
The other 10% of signs didn’t just miss the point, they skewed the message. The “secure the borders” signs. The signs advocating new tax schemes (“fair” taxes and “flat” taxes mostly). The signs accusing President Obama of cutting government expenditures on “national defense” (unfortunately, his budget proposal includes an increase in “defense” funding).
The Tea Party movement must make itself thoroughly anti-political and anti-state. Else it will be stillborn … or end up actually fueling the growth of the state.
I’m not saying that the Tea Party movement must adopt an explicitly anarchist ideology. That would be marvelous, but it’s neither likely nor absolutely necessary. What I am saying is that if the movement falls into the trap of standard political thinking, the jaws of that trap will close around it and make it ineffectual.
Let us consider the nature of government. The state functions, for all practical purposes, as a quasi-biological organism. Like any organism, its first priority, its essential goal, is its own preservation and growth. Like any organism, the state can only do the things it does if it continues to exist.
Just as squirrels store away acorns for winter and bears build up a fat layer to sustain them through hibernation, the state stores away its constituents’ demands for political power against the cold future day when it must justify the use of power as such. The exercise of political power is the state’s “food.” Absent the ability to exercise political power, the state withers … and, ultimately, dies.
Please don’t mistake this claim for the claim that any particular individual embodies the state’s “consciousness.” The state possesses neither consciousness nor conscience. It does, however, possess facsimiles thereof — facsimiles built into it by its creators. The state was created by statists. Its structure and mode of operation reflects the values of its creators.
Because the state treats demands for political power as “food,” such demands on the part of any new popular movement will inevitably become the focus of that new movement’s interactions with the state. The movement will be digested. Those parts of it which constitute “food” will be used — and those parts of it which do not will be excreted.
The core message of the Tea Partiers is an anti-state message. If the purity of that core message can be maintained, the Tea Party movement enters the body politic as a virus with the potential to damage — potentially even kill, although that’s a long shot — the state.
If, on the other hand, the Tea Party message is tainted with “state food” — rinky-dink reorientations of the tax scheme, demands that the integrity of imaginary lines drawn on the ground by politicians be coercively reinforced, pleas that the already morbidly obese “defense” establishment be fed another helping of tiramasu — then that taint will provide the state with the calories it needs to break the Tea Party fever.
On the other hand, we cannot just declare the end of the state. There must be a transition. This is the problem with many libertarian schemes – they often give no thought on how to get from here to there.
There are structural changes to the tax code which might ease that – including for a while taking in enough money to pay off the national debt rather than simply trying to starve the beast and repudiate the debt.
There will always be social structures, even if there are no state structures, to do things like assure adequate saving for retirement, providing for the education of children and a living wage for families, providing for career training for both professionals and tradesmen and providing for the care of the mentally ill and dangerous. These can and all should be done without the state – and in fact must be to undo some of the pathologies built into the society by the state – such as the break-up of families caused by both the Slave Power, its continuation by the criminal justice system and the immigration system and the failure to adequately education certain segments of society because of state sponsored bigotry. Undoing the pathologies of state sponsored racism will take some money and the establishment of new social systems. Once these systems are fully in place, however, the state can be dispensed with.
Aside from having a transition plan for what needs to happen, we need a transition plan to make it happen. There are two ways to go about this:
1. Take over or transform a political party.
2. Start a political party.
I doubt that either the Greens or the Democrats are seizable, so the options are to transform the LP or take over the GOP. Transforming the LP has been tried – and the effort may still be ongoing – under the auspecies of the Libertarian Reform Caucus. The main unaccomplished goal is to throw out the pledge and anything that thwarts electibility – although Carl Milsted believes neither will happen – and besides there is too much baggage for the LP to be the right vehicle. The key is to actually go after the purists and replace them with candidates and party officers who want to actually win power. The existence of a vision for getting from the status quo to a stateless society provides some assurance that the result of winning power won't be Animal Farm. The purists will never accept such a strategy, so using the LP as a vehicle means that a purge really is necessary.
If the will is not there to do that, then the target should be taking over the Republicans. This is no small task, but it is doable. This also requires a purge of a different order. The Neocons, the Cultural Conservatives (the ones who thought institutional racism was a good thing – and yearn for a return of southern pride in government) and the religious conservatives must be purged from both party leadership and elected office. Failure to do that means constantly fighting a rear guard action and risks continuing being a pawn of party statists. The GOP is shrinking – so rising up and taking it over gets easier by the day – although the statists within it are so entrenched, it may be well neigh impossible to oust them. If such an effort is attempted, it would lead to the end of the LP, since every LPer who desires real change over ideological purity would need to switch to the GOP in a big way. Non-statists Democrats would also need to abandon their party to join the effort, provided they agree with a transition to non-statism.
If neither of these parties can be seized, a new party must be built around some kind of realistic transition plan. The advantage is that no purge is necessary to do this. Carl Milsted has a plan to do this – I also do, although mine is a bit more bear bones.
They key question is, are the TEA partiers really serious, or is this about just another 15 minutes of fame for the Paulistas? If this really is a movement for change, we shall see soon.