Fifty years ago, the Hungarian Revolt of 1956 started as a peaceful student demonstration in central Budapest on October 23. The violent reaction of the government soon turned the protests into a nationwide uprising against Soviet control of Hungary. The Hungarian workers and the Hungarian youth were fighting against the power which was supposedly governing in their interest. Despite the revolution’s failure, its spirit is of as much relevance today as it has ever been.

By denying everyone the essential liberty to control one’s life independently, by controlling everything and everybody, the Soviet Union did not emancipate the poor from the prevailing oppressive economic structures; it instead turned its whole population into one of proletarians.

The same was true in Hungary. The government of the People’s Republic of Hungary imposed the paternalist Soviet principles upon its people; it terrorized them and drowned them in state propaganda, day and night. The Hungarian economy suffered greatly from state socialist mismanagement. All of this incited bad sentiments toward the government and finally led to the revolt.

Today, we face similar situations all over the world. Countries are invaded for “humanitarian” reasons and people are oppressed “for their own good.” The result is always the same: death and destruction; mental and material poverty.

The civil war in Iraq, the trials of Turkish dissidents, the famines in North Korea, the oppression of the Tibetans, the Chechen Wars — the list seems to be endless. These are all examples of the eternal war between power and liberty. Increases in power and decreases in liberty are too often justified by “the common good”; the results are always devastating.

It does not stop here. Every one of us experiences it every day: more and more laws are forced upon us; more and more aspects of our private lives are regulated and under observation; more and more money is taken from us. All of this is supposed to be “in our own interest”, “for the economy”, or “for our own security.” Yet, such actions never accomplish what they are supposed to, whatever good intentions might have motivated them. Wars breed more wars; laws increase crime; central planning provokes poverty; control creates chaos.

Thus, we have to ask ourselves: if a great decrease in freedom was not what the Hungarians needed and wanted, how can anything that goes against our will be in our interest? How can any decrease in freedom be for our own good? Everyone’s interest is made up by the individual’s values and passions. But how can values be forced upon us; how can our passions be controlled?

It is time to wake up. It is time to realize that anything less than pure liberty is not to be tolerated, that everyone knows best what is good for him- or herself. Everything the State does is not only a danger to our liberty, but also to our prosperity and to peace and security. Liberty is nothing to be exchanged for peace, prosperity and security, it is their precondition. This was true for the Hungarians in 1956 and it is still true today.

Thus, only a truly voluntary society and a completely free market could solve the problems humanity faces today: poverty, war, oppression, and exploitation. It is time to take up the spirit of the Hungarian demonstrators. But not only are foreign powers unworthy of ruling us, nobody should rule anyone. Man is an end in himself and should not be subject to anyone’s decisions.

Such a demand, of course, is not utopian. Liberty is not utopian; it is an attitude, a commitment. It is an expansion of the principle most of us hold dear in our private lives, respecting the other’s right to life and property. We must apply this principle to “our” politicians and the military. The rules that govern our lives should govern theirs as well.

So, everyone who is committed to liberty, who realizes that “liberty is the mother, not the daughter of order”, should join the fight against any expansion of the government and demand the absolute and final abolition of the State and the disempowerment of its “private” allies. Everyone should fight the disastrous idea of aggression through the proxy of government as a legitimate and effective means to achieve ends.

Last Friday, the Grameen Bank and its founder, Bangladeshi banker and economist Muhammad Yunus, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.” The Nobel Peace Prize committee is certainly right in asserting that lasting peace requires the breaking out of poverty of large population groups. The devastating effects of foreign development aid in the past decades have also demonstrated the need for economic development from below. Is the Grameen Bank thus an important contribution to this kind of development and to the end of poverty and war?

The causes for war and poverty can in most cases be traced back to state activities. The case of Bangladesh is no exception. The Bangladesh Liberation War, which led to the birth of Bangladesh in 1971, claimed up to three million civilian casualties according to some estimates. It is the direct result of the British rule in India. After India gained independence, Muslim-majority areas in the east and west of the Indian subcontinent were joined in a separate country, Pakistan. The Eastern zone was subsequently treated much worse by the central government than the Western zone. This finally resulted in the Bangladesh Liberation War. During the decade following the creation of Bangladesh, the country experienced a series of bloody coups and counter-coups.

Today, some of the main obstacles to economic growth in Bangladesh include inefficient state-owned enterprises, slow implementation of economic reforms, political infighting and corruption. Furthermore, Bangladeshi agriculture is also threatened by intellectual property laws on seeds, granting benefits to transnational corporations at the expense of local farmers.

This clearly shows that the State cannot be trusted to defend peace and prosperity. However, the Grameen Bank is, contrary to popular belief, an institution which relies heavily on state subsidies and its methods are not as much of an example of development from below as one would hope.

The Grameen Bank received its first major loan of $3.4 million from the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development. Since then, it has received grants and subsidized loans from the governments of Canada, Germany, Norway, and Sweden and from the IMF and the World Bank.

The high repayment rates by the debtors are achieved through methods which could be called coercive. The borrowers are grouped into cells of five. Future loans, which are much higher than the first one, are only granted if each member of the cell has repaid his or her first loan. This creates an incentive for each member of the cell to make sure everyone pays back their loans — how they do this is up to them. The repayment rates for second-time borrowers are much lower even though employees of the Grameen Bank monitor all borrowers door-to-door on a weekly basis.

In addition to these unusual methods, the borrowers have to chant the “Sixteen Decisions” during parades, which express the worldview of the Grameen Bank. Decision 16 reads as follows: “We shall take part in all social activities collectively.” Other Decisions emphasize the attempt of the Grameen Bank to emancipate Bangladeshi women from the traditionally patriarchal structures. This seeming emancipation and financial independence come at the price, though, of dependency on the Grameen Bank, which turns out to be less of a bank and more of a cult.

Thus, Muhammad Yunus’ Grameen Bank is not so much an example of economic and social development from below as of control from above, subsidized by various states and institutions.

Real economic and social development from below can only take place when people are allowed full liberty, when fully voluntary market transactions can replace control from above. This, of course, requires the abolition of the State as one of the main causes of poverty brought about by its open aggression against its citizens and more subtle forms of aggression such as its relations with transnational corporations. Only when the State’s central monopoly of force is abolished can humanity live in peace and prosperity.

An essential element for government of, by, and for the people is the acceptance of following majority rule while respecting minority rights. Purely following the will of the majority is what lost Athens the Peloponnesian War, and when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution of the first modern government which was designed to be run purely by the people, they had the example of Athens in mind.

Unfortunately, many people living in nations ostensibly governed by “the people” do believe that the government should do exactly what the majority says. Anytime the enormous power of government is controlled by a fickle group of people, it is liable to swing from one extreme to the other, damaging everything it was intended to protect along the way.

That is why, instead of a democracy, where the people have a direct voice in all decisions, they created a republic, where the people elect trusted representatives to make political decisions. In order to make sure even a majority of those representatives didn’t disrespect the rights of the minorities, they created a three-branched government interlaced with checks and balances.

Still, however, despite the best intentions of the Founders, the rights of minorities, even those represented in the electorate, have been consistently ignored with the express consent of the majority, and still are today. Americans are forced to pay for wars they abhor, financial aid to countries that they believe will squander the money, money to the United Nations, a world government that nobody elected, charity to their fellow Americans that they might have given anyways in a form they believe to be more effective. All this follows the will of the majority while blithely denying the rights of the minority.

Is there any way around this problem? Yes, in fact there is — anything that the government can find a way to not do, it shouldn’t do. The fewer things the government does, the fewer minority rights it will be violating, and the closer we will be to a government which truly rules by the will of all the people.

But can any government which has the final say on any issue be trusted to “color inside the lines”? In a system where government can interpret those lines however it likes — which is the situation in every state, past and present — it cannot be. Some special interest group will convince some legislator that only the government can take care if some problem (even though it has been taken care of without government for the lifetime of the nation) and suddenly, the government will have a new power.

This is how, for example, the world’s longest-lasting so-called limited state now regulates under what circumstances one can sell novel chemicals for human ingestion. The United States Food and Drug Administration, Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, among others, now impose the prudish opinions of what is at least a majority in Congress on what individuals may consume.

In essence, those living under the auspices of the government of the United States no longer own their own body. Of course, that is not how it is presented to us — we are being “protected” from ourselves and from drug companies that want our business and therefore…will sell us drugs that kill us. Clearly there have been some tragedies with side effects of drugs, but the recent Vioxx scandal demonstrates that the FDA’s regulations have failed to protect Americans from dangerous drugs. We still must make our own conclusions about what we put into our bodies, based on either our own judgment or the advice of the experts we each select for ourselves.

Some will agree that these regulations clearly constitute a transgression against individual liberty, and that we must work to eliminate it and similar infringements on our inherent rights. But the state is always fallible. Governments will always tend to expand until they are either abolished or face so much effective competition from market-based sources that they are no longer a monopoly of law and security services — and thus are no longer truly a government.

Child exploitation is an evil that has plagued humanity throughout its history. Social awareness of child welfare and consensus on its definition is relatively recent but on the rise. Following this trend, many in Congress work continuously to address this issue, creating new legislative prerogatives for the State to interdict predators and protect children.

How, then, do we reconcile these goals with the case of Mark Foley, a Congressman recently caught engaging in sexually explicit conversations with a minor? Perhaps those who seek to protect us from the nameless, faceless criminals out there have completely misunderstood the problem. The body empowered with enacting nationwide laws, creating criteria for punishing people, and directing the full power of the State contains the very corruption it seeks to root out among us.

It makes one wonder: whom can we trust?

As an anarchist promoting the abolition of this governmental body, it seems reasonable to me that Congress would be as prone to the evils and weaknesses of human experience as any of us. That is precisely the reason they are worthy of ruling neither me nor anybody in this country. We are all fallible, equally capable of deceit and depravity — but also nobility and prudence. We learn whom to trust and whom to avoid not by decrees from on high but by building relationships.

Society is the answer to our problems: the fashioning of markets, communities, networks, and organizations on a voluntary basis, allowing people the freedom to experiment, innovate, band together, and part ways based on their own interests and judgment. We defend our families by allying ourselves with our neighbors, hiring agents among a proven pool of open competitors, and sharing information and advice. Protecting children is best accomplished by the people who understand the stakes: parents and communities.

Of course, bad things happen — whether or not you have the power to pass laws. This brings us to a question anarchists are often asked: how would we prevent x, y, or z from happening without the state? What mechanisms exist to guarantee outcomes acceptable to all? How do we “balance” the sheer volume of competing interests in the world without some empowered and managing body? And in the case of child exploitation: how do we ensure our children’s safety from depraved individuals?

These are all good questions whose answers normal people seek. Unfortunately, they’re rarely asked honestly in politics. Rather, they are posed as rhetorical preludes to some new control placed on society. Instead of looking at the problem as one of complex interpersonal and community dynamics, with a host of causes and possible solutions, we are encouraged to see the problem as a one-dimensional, simple omission: evil originates from a lack of sufficient governance.

The answer from government is always to cripple ourselves for our own good. By making society less complex, less adaptive, and less empowered, we are easier to manage in a top-down fashion and, therefore, more predictable and homogeneous. Through stricter oversight and prohibitions handed down by Congress we can start to rediscover our virtue, at least as Congress defines it.

But the irony is that Congress doesn’t have virtue figured out, either.

The Foley scandal demonstrates the impotence of authority to effect moral management of society. Those who make laws on our behalf are just as flawed as we are. Their officialdom grants them no special insight into human nature. Their power doesn’t convey the ability to discipline society — or themselves. When we ask for leadership from above, a guarantee of safety and order, we surrender our consciences to the unworthy. Government will forever attempt to deliver on unreachable guarantees of safety and moral health by instituting more controls on us.

Indeed, reports indicate that politicians from both parties may have known of the problem and yet did nothing to stop it. Think about it: the most powerful body in the Nation, ignoring a case of exploitation they can address immediately without resorting to political maneuvering or deliberation. Then ask yourself: is any of this about the children?

Think about Foley the next time a law is passed that takes away more of our liberty and freedom “for our own good” or to “protect the children”. He demonstrates the truth of politics: virtue is not a matter of coercive laws and enlightened governance. We must place our faith and trust in ourselves, cooperatively building the solutions we seek rather than hoping they will be forced upon us.

When the United States invaded Iraq, it did so with the proclaimed goal of delivering the Iraqi people from dictatorship and helping them achieve a democratic society.

Now the dictator is gone, but instead of democracy, Iraq has civil war. What went wrong?

Well, more things than one, perhaps. But one in particular at least.

In any country torn by violent ethnic or religious conflict, what each faction fears most is that one of the other factions will gain control of the central state apparatus and use it to oppress, exploit, or crush its rivals. In such a situation, “democracy,” if understood as majority rule, offers no more security than dictatorship; to Iraq’s Sunni minority, for example, “democracy” simply means the threat of oppression by the Shi’ite majority.

Perhaps a better meaning of democracy is: the people ruling themselves. But in that case, mere majority rule is really no more democratic than dictatorship; whether the majority dominates the minority or the minority dominates the majority, either way it’s some of the people ruling others of the people, not genuine self-rule.

The real root of Iraq’s civil strife is the shared presumption that there must be a territorial monopoly of power — a centralised state exercising authority over the entire geographic region known as Iraq, and thus over all the different factions, Sunni and Shi’ite, Arab and Kurd.

As long as that presumption prevails, then given the mutual distrust among the factions, it is only to be expected that each faction will be desperate to ensure that it, rather than one of its rivals, gains control of the central state. A violent power struggle is thus only to be expected.

A chief cause of Iraq’s civil strife, then, is each group’s need to control the central state lest its enemies control it first. Replacing Saddam Hussein with a majoritarian constitution, then, is no move toward peace; it simply changes which groups get to be the dominators and which the dominated.

The obvious solution to this problem, then, is: eliminate the central state.

Some observers have suggested partitioning Iraq into three separate states: one Shi’ite, one Sunni, and one Kurdish. While this is a move in the right direction, it ignores the deep divisions, and potential for relations of domination, within each of those groups as well. Calling for three centralised states instead of one still leaves unchallenged the presumption that any given geographical area, large or small, must be under the aegis of some central state.

It is not inevitable that every society must organise itself as a state. There have been successful stateless societies in the past, and may be again. The nation-state’s day may well be passing, as absolute monarchy, chattel slavery, and other institutions once claimed to be essential to civilisation have largely passed.

Market anarchists like economist Dr. Bruce Benson in his book The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State have shown that institutions for resolving disputes and keeping the peace can be, and historically have been, successfully provided by private voluntary means, and need not enjoy a territorial monopoly or be funded by taxation.

Let Shi’ites live under Shi’ite law, let Sunnis live under Sunni law, let heretics and infidels live under heretic and infidel law; multiply legal institutions according to consumer demand, and resolve disputes among different institutions by arbitration. And thereby free each Iraqi from the fear that some one institution not his or her own will be the one to be imposed on everybody by state fiat.

If fifty people in a room are fighting to get hold of the one gun, in the fear that someone else will get it first and use it against everybody else, the solution is not to take sides with one of the contending parties, but to throw the gun out the window. In this case, the state is the gun.

The 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes said that life without a centralised state would be a war of all against all. He was wrong. In Iraq, at least, it’s the state’s presence, not its absence, that generates a war of all against all.

It seems to me the problem the world has with North Korea and its dictator Kim Jong-Il getting nuclear weapons of mass destruction boils down to two main points. First, North Korea is a communist dictatorship that cannot ever be trusted, and so its getting such horrible weapons is a horrible threat to most, if not all of us. Second, it is a clear violation of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The first problem is real but misunderstood, while the second is pure baloney. It is baloney since the NPT is nothing but a multi-state attempt to keep the knowledge of how to make nasty nuclear bombs within a small group. The overall aim of the treaty is not to save human kind from the horrible effects of nuclear war; it is to save the nuclear power oligarchy from competition. There is no reason why “new” nuclear powers should be trusted less than current nuclear powers. Unless you wish to keep the trump card while playing it over and over in international politics.

The problem of North Korea (and other countries) violating the NPT thus has nothing to do with us as individuals or citizens of the civilized West. It has only to do with “our” heads of states wishing to protect their special powers.

The other problem is the real one: the North Korean government isn’t to be trusted with lethal weapons. And to be honest, Kim Jong-Il seems like a real nut. But on the other hand, there are there any Prime Ministers or Presidents who could or should be trusted with such things? Most of them cannot be trusted with limited powers in government or even with small amounts of money.

The problem here has nothing to do with the specific nature of the North Korean government, which, I’m sure, is one of the most screwed up on the planet. It also has nothing to do with the North Korean leader, the cultified Kim Jong-Il. And it has nothing to do with the official ideology of his totalitarian state, “communism.”

Rather, it has to do with a much deeper problem. It has to do with the problem of rule and specifically the structure of government itself. As Lord Acton so wisely stated, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The problem of corruption should be obvious, be it the obvious corruption of “banana republics” or the more “civilized” campaign contributions and dealings in parliament. Corrupted people cannot be trusted, who knows who placed the higher bid and thus gets the full worth of the bribe?

Judging from our politicians, not only does power corrupt; the corrupted are obviously also attracted by power.

A North Korea with the recently acquired knowledge and ability to produce nuclear-based weaponry simply points to a much greater and widely spread problem: the problem with government per se. Since power corrupts, we cannot trust the ones with power. Then how can we trust them with the weapons to protect us from foreign threats; especially since we are at the same time forcefully disarmed by our “protectors.”

The real question here is: Can we trust political power with weapons to destroy us and our earth? Can government be trusted?

The questions are radical, but it should be obvious we, i.e. humankind, are in need of some radical change. We have, as a species, had more than a thousand years of experience of political government. What has it given us?

On the world level the result is at best racism and international “tension,” but wars and world wars as well. On the domestic level we’re experiencing excessive taxation and regulation, violations of constitutional rights and personal integrity, as well as executions and government control of young people’s minds through public schooling. In other countries, and during wartime, we’ve seen work camps, torture, and persecution.

The answer should thus be obvious. No, we cannot trust government. Perhaps we should abolish it altogether and get rid of the danger once and for all.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A tiny think tank has set out on a project to provide ongoing news commentary in order to promote their set of views, known as market anarchism.

AUBURN, ALABAMA — October 10, 2006 — Center for a Stateless Society — The Molinari Institute, a market anarchist think tank, today launched a new media effort aiming to put their agenda to abolish government front and center in US political discourse. Dubbing their project the Center for a Stateless Society (www.c4ss.org), institute officials laid out plans to publish and distribute news commentary written by anarchists with radically free-market oriented views on economics — taking market anarchism out of the realm of academia and obscure internet blogs in order to put it in the public eye.

Molinari Institute President Roderick Long explained “For too long libertarians, and I mean anarchist libertarians, have treated market anarchism almost as an esoteric doctrine. It’s time to put market anarchism front and center in our educational efforts, time to start making it a familiar and recognizable position. The Center for a Stateless Society aims to bring a market anarchist perspective to the popular press, rather than leaving it confined to scholarly studies and movement periodicals.”

Naming longtime radical libertarian activist and freelance web developer Brad Spangler as the first Director of the Center, Long unveiled the Center’s new web site at www.c4ss.org for Molinari Institute supporters and the public.

Said Spangler “I’m honored to accept the post. In anticipation of this moment, we’ve developed a database of thousands of US media outlets for email distribution of content which these publishers will be able to use free of charge. Additionally, the c4ss.org web site makes use of stable, reliable and “free as in freedom” open source web technologies. We’ve developed the site in such a way as to make maximum possible use of social bookmarking services, web syndication feeds and search engine optimization techniques. With this site, we aim to awaken more Americans than ever before to the brutal reality that all governments everywhere are essentially nothing more than murderous bandit gangs — and show them the shining light of hope for a world without the State.”

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ORGANIZATIONAL SUMMARY
The mission of the Molinari Institute is to promote understanding of the philosophy of Market Anarchism as a sane, consensual alternative to the hypertrophic violence of the State. The Institute takes its name from Gustave de Molinari (1819-1912), originator of the theory of Market Anarchism. The Center for a Stateless Society is the Molinari Institute’s new media center.

CONTACT
Brad Spangler
Center for a Stateless Society
media@c4ss.org
http://www.c4ss.org/