1 post tagged “aggression”
I.
Libertarianism applies the general ethical code, which the majority of man believes as it relates to their personal activities and the actions of other private persons, consistently. It goes without saying that most men find things like robbery, rape, murder, and so on something that is hostile to any kind of "natural" code of ethical behavior as it relates to private interactions. We can rationally say, then, that this code is generally in the intuition of man because if this were not the case we could expect that the condition of the world would be something different than it is today. That condition would be a world where man would be nothing much more than an animal beast. Civilization as we know it could not exist anywhere.
This is why the majority of mankind finds it appalling, and rightfully and thankfully so, when man B goes out and kills his neighbor man A for no other reason than B hating A. Undoubtedly a civilization that found this acceptable would not last very long. On the contrary, most men believe that A has every right to defend himself from the invader, B. The only reason that this is so is because it is natural that A has a right to himself; since if he did not there would be no justification for his self -defense and -preservation, but that would be contradictive, not the least of which would include the fact that it would imply that B somehow has given rights that are not considered rights for mankind.
It is in the self-interest of mankind to recognize private property. This is because it allows mankind to earn the great awards and benefits from social cooperation in a division of labor. To trade X and Y implies an understanding of the principles of private property and how coercion is against those principles. As the great, late Murray N. Rothbard, one of my heroes, writes:
Man is born naked into the world, and needing to use his mind to learn how to take the resources given him by nature, and to transform them (for example, by investment in "capital") into shapes and forms and places where the resources can be used for the satisfaction of his wants and the advancement of his standard of living. The only way by which man can do this is by the use of his mind and energy to transform resources ("production") and to exchange these products for products created by others. Man has found that, through the process of voluntary, mutual exchange, the productivity and hence the living standards of all participants in exchange may increase enormously. The only "natural" course for man to survive and to attain wealth, therefore, is by using his mind and energy to engage in the production-and-exchange process. He does this, first, by finding natural resources, and then by transforming them (by "mixing his labor" with them, as Locke puts it), to make them his individual property, and then by exchanging this property for the similarly obtained property of others. The social path dictated by the requirements of man's nature, therefore, is the path of "property rights" and the "free market" of gift or exchange of such rights. Through this path, men have learned how to avoid the "jungle" methods of fighting over scarce resources so that A can only acquire them at the expense of B and, instead, to multiply those resources enormously in peaceful and harmonious production and exchange.
This, as Rothbard explicates, is what Franz Oppenheimer called the "economic means" to procure wealth. It is this method that adds to the overall wealth, meaning it is not parasitic on or subtractive from the overall wealth. This, unlike versus forms of socialism and aggression against private property, makes it meet the Pareto-criterion.
To iterate, a world without recognition of self-ownership and private property would be a world of chaos. Man would be in the jungle. There would be man constantly trying to take another man's possession of tangible property and the other man fighting to take it back. A civilized world, in contrast, could not stand for this. There is only one principle that works, and it works from the very beginning of mankind on, without running into contradictions and irresolvable conflicts; conflicts which are possible because of the reality of scarcity making any ethical theory by necessity a property theory.* This is the principle of self-ownership and the first-come principle of homesteading tangible property, i.e., taking a state of nature and transforming it into one's control and thus ownership. Implied in this is the right to voluntarily give away (or contractually rent-out) tangible property to others.
*If there was no scarcity, then conflict would not be possible. My usage of X would have no impact on my future supply of it or on anyone else's present or future supply. It is when X is scarce that conflict is possible and when there is, as a result, a need for rules in regards to X.
II.
Man A has every right to his physical body. He is the first direct user of it (and the only possible direct user), and therefore just owner, whose spirit is "fused" into his body. In the case that man B attacks A, A has every right to defend himself against B because A has self-ownership and therefore has the right to deny B's attack. (Just imagine the logical consequences if this were not the case!)
The same private property rights are at play with A's tangible and alienable property he acquired either through homesteading or contractualism.
Good X is taken away from A by B. Is this necessarily theft? It of course depends on who has the real title ownership (A or B?). Assuming that A has the actual title ownership the answer would be that this would be a case of theft. A would have every right to take back X from B. He would also have the right to hire C to take back X from B.
Recovering stolen property does not mean, however, that A can go out and kill and/or rob C and D, as "collateral damage," to get X from B. This would make A either just as evil as B or perhaps even more evil than B. Nor can A take E and F and involuntarily draft them to go after B. Drafting, when we take away Orwellian language, being nothing more than slavery.
Neither is it acceptable for and ethical for A to engage in a "preemptive attack" against B because A feels B looks bellicose, muscular, and so forth. It would be evil for A to aggress against B because A just thinks that B will attack him sometime at an unknown date and time in the future.* This idea would allow for everyone to attack anyone else if they just think that another given person will attack them sometime down the road. All that this would infer is that everyone can attack everyone else whenever they feel like it. Clearly a man who thinks and feels that another man will attack him in the future does not imply that it will actually happen. All a preemptive attack is, is a form of unjustifiable aggression. He who engages in it should suffer the same consequences as he who does violence against another man for other reasons.
The world with the "preemptive attack" rule being acceptable would make it that if A feels that B will attack him in the future, he will consequently start planning to attack B before that might happen. B will likely feel the same thing and get ready to attack A first. A, following the preemptive attack rule, would likewise keep the fact that B would be likely thinking about such a thing and as a consequence try to beat B by attacking him even sooner. And B would do likewise and so on. This madness would turn man into a savage and bring him to the jungle.
Preemptive attacks would not prevent conflicts or lower them. All that would be done is an increase of conflicts. Only the insanity of the modern age would think otherwise.
We can call a "Just War" one of private institutions and individuals who directly target their aggressing enemy, say made up of outlaw private (or State) institutions and individuals, who let us also say took by force a large amount of goods and land property. This Just War would be one of high discrimination between combatants and noncombatants. Killing innocent people** who had nothing to do with the original aggression would be considered murder. (See above.) A Just War would be voluntarily funded and the forgotten conservative laws of war from the past would have to be upheld.
*Now obviously there is nothing wrong with A arming himself, hiring private security guards, securing his house in one way or another, or something like this in case his emotional feelings turn out to be accurate.
**One might reply with an example from Walter Block and ask what about a terrorist armed with a bomb who has a hostage that is about to blow up a hospital. If a security guard killed the terrorist and was forced, by necessity, to do the same for the hostage, should this be prohibited? Dr. Block would reply that this is a case of "negative homesteading." For example, A grabs B. A threatens B and tells him to kill C. A tells B that if he (B) does not kill C he (A) will kill him (B). The libertarian answer appears to be that B must not kill C. He cannot "spread the misery." In the case of the hospital, if it is impossible to kill the terrorist without killing the hostage, Dr. Block would argue that this would be acceptable in this "extreme" case because the "misery cannot be spread."
III.
The very legitimacy of the State itself relies a great deal on the estimation that the solitary way to provide and supply security, law, and judicial services is with this institution. An institution that is unique compared to all other societal institutions in that it maintains itself by coercion as a monopoly and has the ability to unilaterally without permission to tax men over a certain geographical territory.
Unmistakably all States must share these defining characteristics. Competition over the ability to tax others would produce a situation where everyone could tax everyone else. There would not be much of a society left after that. A State must eliminate all competition, if taxation is to happen. Therefore the only way for a State to maintain itself is if it is in a monopolistic position. It is a monopoly of violence. Officials in the State must tell others that what they (qua State officials) do is acceptable and approvable but not for anyone else. For anyone else it is unacceptable and un-approvable. It is, actually, a great evil. They must be locked up.
And what does this say about the State itself? It exists in contradiction to the laws it makes because it, itself, does not abide by them.
The injustice of taxation (and related things), which all States must have to maintain themselves as compulsory institutions, generally will not persuade the ethical and moral relativist to reject statism as an evil enterprise.
So libertarianism is unique in the fact that it applies the ethical code consistently. Robbery or slavery is not just wrong if a man in a dark alley commits such an act against another person who has the misfortune to meet him. It is also wrong for an organization or institution called "the State." We would not give a pass to Wal-Mart if it robbed people that entered its store; anymore than we would give it a pass if it went house-to-house to do likewise. Strangely enough, though, most people give the State a pass.
But it is said that the only way to have peace in society between persons is if there is a sovereign, otherwise man will live in the jungle. Firstly, the first main section of this blog entry seems to suggest that the idea of peace between private persons is generally a "natural" thing, more or less, that most men have, even though we will always have a small minority of thugs, con artists, murderers and the like. Mankind would probably have disappeared if this were incorrect. Secondly, in times of the Middle Ages, for example, the idea of sovereignty did not exist. It was then thought by all that everyone was under the law and that there was no "sovereign" above it. Thirdly, the idea of a sovereign creating peace or being the fountainhead of peace is illogical for several reasons.
For the second, we can turn to Marco Bassani and Carlo Lottiri. They write, in The Myth of National Defense, that the modern State is an example of modernity because in feudal times it did not exist. There was a libertarian "polycentric juridical order." Plus It was something very much compatible with old style conservatism.
there was no single source of law and order: the production of security was never considered a distinct institutional affair, but rather a concern of the while community. For several centuries, customs, traditions and ancient Roman laws worked together in assuring a juridical order. Law in the Middle Ages was a way of resolving conflicts, but it was kept a more or less private business. There was no organic conception of the "social body," and thus crime remained a private matter to be taken care of with well-defined rules. In other words, crime was never considered a social problem, a wound inflicted on the collective body. This, in turn, implied that the victims were the center of any lawsuit; redress was done from the point of the view of the victims, never of a supposedly wounded collectivity.
...Prior to the rise of the State, law and its interpreters had to recognize the existence of traditions, ethnic and family ties, and customs and culture. Law was mostly unwritten; it coincided with customs, and therefore it existed in a series of concrete cases that were outside the control of any political authority.
For the third, if Hobbes was correct, then a sovereign State could never itself come into being.* For peace to be made between persons it is claimed that there must be a sovereign legally-binding force which would come about through agreement with the public. But how did the State come into being? There would have had to be some outside binding force to make the agreement happen to create the State, with Hobbesian logic. This assumes a State before a State. Hence, to have first created a State implies that peace is possible without a binding force. Moreover, all States exist in more contradiction to this claim of the need for a State because they all exist in internal anarchy. Sovereignty is made between subjects under a State but not for those in the State. Internal rule is nothing more than a kind of "vigilante justice." This is because there is not another external binding making the binding within the State anarchy free.** There is also external, international anarchy between different States because there is no World State.
In the attempt to get rid of international anarchy, for instance, would require a World State, or at least approaching one. Nonetheless getting rid of this anarchy would produce a greater chance of internal corruption within the World State and a greater chance that it will be more aggressive to its subjects. The latter is because no one can "vote with their feet" and move to less aggressive States as one can with international anarchy. The greater number of States, and the smaller they are, produces a tendency for them to be less brutal to their subjects and requires them to avoid implementing protectionism. As there are less and less States, which get larger and larger, the incentive to be less brutal lowers and the incentive for protectionism increases. The same goes for moneys. A greater number of moneys means a greater competition and pressure for sound, commodity-based moneys. By lessening international anarchy there will thus be a tendency for more aggressive and brutal States. Greater international anarchy must then produce a tendency for better conditions than less international anarchy.
And just like there is anarchy between different States in the world, there is anarchy between subjects of different States in the world. Conflict can happen between two subjects under one State and it can happen between subjects of different States. These kinds of disputes happen in international anarchy and are generally resolved, which again is in contradiction to Hobbes. (Below we will try to explore this more and relate it to how a natural order of private property would resolve disputes.)
Hopefully as you can see, one of the big lessons that should be learned from all of this is that a sovereign, monopolistic institution of security production is really only possible because of public and internal support of opinion. Furthermore, looking through the various holes of the State's existence and the various anarchies that by necessity exist helps show how a pluralistic system of private property agreements, free business enterprises, firms, voluntary associations, groups, covenants, localities, intermediate institutions, and things of this nature could fill the role of security provider and producer. I would also point out that this system is not based on the notion of some pseudo-idea that individuals are atoms. Instead it fully sees that they are a part of family and that their interactions in society are based on an institutional framework (which is anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian).
*It is funny that one would say this because it forgets that man is not an atom and is born into a family. How is peace possible there? Robert Nisbet writes: "The awful power that Hobbes gives to his Leviathan, as the only means of combating the forces of disintegration and anarchy, which, Hobbes thought, dominate man's life outside of Leviathan, has for its necessary consequence an elimination of all the differences and inequalities which compose the social order." Rousseau and his "General Will" was only the next natural thing after Hobbes.
**There might be a hierarchy to this, true. But this is the case with everything, and therefore the point remains accurate.
IV.
"It is in war," says Murray Rothbard,
that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. Society becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betraying truth for the supposed public interest. Society becomes an armed camp, with the values and the morale – as Albert Jay Nock once phrased it – of an "army on the march."
As Rothbard writes, war is without question the worst display of statism. It is mass murder on the grand scale. Nothing should be clearer to the genuine libertarian than this.
"Just War" and the State do not go together, for the State is an institution that monopolizes aggressive violence. Not only does it apply it on its "given" territory, i.e., "vertical violence," it many times even goes beyond its given territory to apply it on other places and other people, i.e., "horizontal violence." State rulers no doubt like the idea to expand their territory because they can then control a greater amount of people and tax them. The same is true with those in the business world that are connected with the State. We call this the military-industrial-complex.
Increasingly in modern society there has been the idea, by both left-liberals and neoconservatives, that there is some kind of collectivist "world community," like the United Nations (or the United States, for that matter), that is supposed to organize States to police the world to freeze the status quo. State A attacks State B and then States C, D, and E are supposed to come to the defense of B.
There is an attempt to make this analogue to private persons by classifying these States as the actual just owners of the territories they occupy. The area a State occupies, however, is parasitic on the natural owners of private property. It is they that "own" the territory, not the State. On top of this, it should be pointed out that State territories are not something that is written in stone. It is something that is arbitrary and fuzzy. State A might have, in the past, had its control over the area that State B now has. In addition, in most of these wars who is the greater aggressor is ambiguous. (E.g., Japan's attack on the U.S. government was the result from previous provocation from the U.S. There has never been a legitimate case for U.S. warmongering with other States.)
What is more, if States C, D, and E do get involve, this will then increase aggression vertically in those respected areas with the people that live there, because taxes will have to be increased (if not directly, then indirectly through, e.g., inflation). Aggression would as a consequence expand. The idea of the world collective holding together the status quo would set into motion an ever enlarging amount of peoples getting forced into the conflict either directly or indirectly. It is for this reason that this must be opposed.
State wars, also, generally imply mass, democratic wars. When State A is fighting B the rulers know that B is dependent on its citizens in productive civil society. B knows the same is true for A. (I.e., that the funding of the war comes not from the State but those under it in the market.) Therefore statist wars produce a tendency for war against all and lose discriminatory features. This means that wars start to increase the number of mass bombings. These war measures are not targeted and will almost always imply the mass murdering of noncombatants. Because everyone is forced into paying taxes for the war, everyone becomes a target from the frame of reference of the opponent.
Given that States and wars do indeed exist, the most important thing that must be done is to limit war as far as possible. No State should be allowed to expand their monopolization of violence for the reason that this would only expand violence both for the given subject's tax payers and for those private citizens who would be caught in the war outside that group of tax payers. Subjects of a State should always put as much effort possible to prevent war or, if it has occurred, to end it.
If war sadly breaks out, then it must be limited as possible. War must be as discriminatory and "conservative" as possible. No other State should get involved in the war by following "laws of neutrality." This implies that no State should ever give foreign aid to other States (because that would expand aggression in the given State, give more power to another State to be aggressive to their citizens, and will have other unintended consequences, viz., probable resentment and blowback).
"In condemning all wars," writes Rothbard,
regardless of motive, the libertarian knows that there may well be varying degrees of guilt among States for any specific war. But the overriding consideration for the libertarian is the condemnation of any State participation in war. Hence his policy is that of exerting pressure on all States not to start a war, to stop one that has begun, and to reduce the scope of any persisting war in injuring civilians of either side or no side.
Certain weapons, especially nuclear, must be condemned which imply the mass killing of innocent, since they cannot be targeted weapons. For this reason, as Rothbard says, getting rid of them must be high on the agenda. As the great conservative Richard Weaver said, the past use of these weapons "are so inimical to the foundations on which civilization is built that they cast into doubt the very possibility of recovery." A civilized world must do its best to get rid of them.
Zero tolerance can exist for any kind of imperialism or empire. This implies that if a private man, from State 1, goes to another State, he then takes the risk of going to S2. In the case that trouble happened in S2, S1 cannot come to his rescue.
Additionally this means that if during war State S1 invaded and now occupies part, P, of what was previously in control by S2, S2 has no right to take over P. On the other hand, those in P can have a targeted revolution (i.e., a vertical conflict) to unite with S2. Private groups in S2 could voluntarily help the revolutionists in P. Such vertical revolutions can theoretically be justified because they can be targeted against actual aggressors and be voluntary, whereas horizontal conflicts cannot be.
Also, S3 and S4 cannot target P for "liberation," for reasons covered above. Just as important, we cannot call "liberation" S3 getting rid of S1 to then put those previously under S1 under its own rule. Freeing another implies that man A frees B from the slavery of C. It does not mean that A frees B from C only to take B for his own domination.
V.
Rothbard explains in "Society without a State," a classic 1974 essay/speech, that we can look to both historic and modern day examples of how law and order can be handled without a State. To this end Rothbard turns to William C. Wooldridge and his book Uncle Sam, the Monopoly Man.
For example, a body of private law for merchants in the Middle Ages was developed that only used social ostracism. And, for modern examples, today we have seen the rise of many private insurance companies turning to private arbitration services through the American Arbitration Association (AAA). The advantages of the development of private law here is clear: the cost of time is lowered and arbitration, working in a division of labor, allows for specialization.
The very nature of States is aggressive violence and for this reason it seems that war is in their nature. There is no reason to blindly trust human goodness and incorruptibility, but this is what most do with the State. Since all States can externalize the costs of war, States will be more likely to engage in war than other institutions. Any institutions that provide defense, law, and order voluntarily on the market (and accordingly are non-monopolistic) cannot externalize the costs and will, hence, be less likely to engage in war or any other kind of aggression against innocent persons.
One only has to think about Iraq. Imagine if individual and family households could withdraw paying taxes. How likely would the U.S. government still be in Iraq? The question answers itself.
The classical liberal minarchist, as Rothbard elucidates in Power and Market: Government and the Economy, who is both a supporter of the free market and the State as protector is "caught in an insoluble contradiction" because the minarchist "sanction[s] and advocate[s] massive invasion of property by the very agency (government) that is supposed to defend people against invasion!" This is what libertarianism avoids. Man and his family have a right to private property or they do not. Free markets are supreme or statism is.
In addition, Rothbard goes on, they are confused and tangled because they normally do not push their own logic to its ultimate conclusions. As we covered, there exists international anarchy. But if these minarchists complain about the "anarchy" of statelessness, surely they must then want to get rid of the anarchy between various nation-States. Nonetheless, "limited" State advocates hardly follow their own logic.
Conflict that happens between A, from S1, and B, from S2, is done through this anarchy without an ultimate sovereign. Both go to their respected courts. If both courts reach the same conclusion, then the verdict is in. If they reach different conclusions, they then go to arbitration and the case is resolved there.
Under a natural order of private property this is what would be resembled. Man A can be with private defense agent X and man B with agent Y. If X and Y disagreed, then what? What would result is the development of independent, third party arbitration services. Customers and private institutions knowing this possible situation, would work out these details in their contracts (generally) beforehand.* (This will happen as long as the majority of the public is not made up of warmongers. However, to repeat, with whatever level of warmongering ideology, the chance of battling out is more unlikely under the free market because it is very costly and it is impossible to externalize the costs of aggression. See this.)
These third-party arbitration services would have to remain independent and fair because otherwise people or other protection agencies would not go to them in the future. This means there is a great incentive for fairness and independence. And, if the individual protection agencies become corrupted or whatnot, people could go into relationship with one of their competitors.
One reason that this is better than the current system is that arbitration in the free market really is a third-party, independent service. There exists no true arbitration service within a State controlled area. All such services are part of the same monopolistic institution. It is preferable to have competitive market conditions than to have a society stuck with one agent. One agent is an agent that can get away with more corruption. You cannot end the relationship. Everyone is forced into a relationship with it as agent, and because of this it can act more aggressively and at the same time need not worry about acting in an economic manner to cut costs. That is to say, it will tend to be less competent with judgeship and economically inefficient creating lots of extra expense for its "customers." What's more, a State provided law system gets to deal with cases in which directly involve itself. The outcome of which will be to award itself in these cases. Thus, statist management will then tend to be even more aggressive.
Oppositely, private defense agents, courts and arbitrators, like all other goods and services, would work on the open, free market and would be in constant competition with each other. The voluntary setting and the market competition would award those private enterprises that performed this best for the public and the others would be driven off the market. Earning profit and staying in business would require serving the needs of consumers, viz., sound judgment, impartiality, expertise, efficiency, low costs, etc. Under statist monopolistic conditions, we see the quality go down and the prices go up. But under free non-monopolistic conditions, we can expect to see the quality go up and the prices go down.
Complex societies, as you know, heavily rely on insurance and credit reports. It can be pretty much predicted that a free society would have develop private insurance defense companies. Being insurance companies they would insure one's property from outside aggression. This means that, if one is the victim of a thief, the insurance company would pay the victim. This is obviously not something that the insurance company would want to do. Consequently insurance companies would do their best to prevent aggression. They would have to do this to remain financially viable. These companies would also have great incentive to go after the thief and force him to pay the victim, so they do not have to.
Contrast this with the State: Do they lose money if they do not prevent crime? The answer is no. (Which is then better?)
The State is not only bad at preventing crime and recovering stolen property, it has progressively outlawed gun ownership making people helpless and more vulnerable vis-à-vis private criminals. What this has done is increased the State's power relative to civil society and greatly increased man's dependency on them (the State) for protection.
With private insurance companies: The better protected their customers, the better they are off as well.
For that reason private insurance would have the exact opposite incentive because a better protected customer is less likely to get attacked and thus less likely to be indemnified. (So those better protected---who, for example, own a gun---will be offered lower premiums.) Moreover, they would require their customers to engage in peaceful rules of conduct. This is because the only way to insure something is if it is more or less random and uncontrollable. To insure someone who engaged in aggression against someone else would be equivalent (as Hans Hoppe says) to insuring people from burning their own house on fire; an impossibility that would make the insurance company go bankrupt.
We have to remember that State courts do not provide or guarantee impartiality. There is nothing magical about them. Instead what they do provide as impartiality is for the State monopoly, as consumers are stuck to deal with them and only them. A free market is what provides real "checks-and-balances" because there is competition. Instead what we have today under a statist system is no checks-and-balances because the court is one monopoly. That is, all courts are part of the same institution. While corruption is possible in both a statist system and a non-statist system, since there is competition and market checks we can say that there would be less in a non-statist one.
To quote Patrick Tinsley in "Private Police":
In fact, it is the public police that stands to profit from look-the-other-way law enforcement. After all, arriving at its funding, as it does, from (coerced) tax revenues, the public police will not endure economic hardship if and when it fails to arrest the onslaught of crime. Therefore, it pay for its officers to accept bribes from the perpetrators of crime, offering in exchange clemency.
*Hans Hoppe says: "On the one hand, [this] system would allow for systematically increased variability and flexibility of law. Rather than imposing a uniform set of standards onto everyone (as under statist conditions), insurance agencies could and would compete against each other, not just via price but in particular also through product differentiation and development. ... There could and would exist side by side, for instance, Catholic insurers applying Canon law, Jewish insurers applying Mosaic law, . . . all of them sustained by and vying for a voluntarily paying clientele. . . . That is, no one would be forced to live under 'foreign' law . . ." And "On the other hand, a system of insurers offering competition law codes would promote a tendency toward the unification of law..." in "foreign" conflicts.
VI.
In conclusion, the path to peace and good defense is a path to a stateless society. It is not the answer to all problems nor is it perfect, mankind always being what it is. But, Rothbard writes,
in a stateless society there would be no regular, legalized channel for crime and aggression, no government apparatus the control of which provides a secure monopoly for invasion of person and property. When a State exists, there does exist such a built-in channel, namely, the coercive taxation power, and the compulsory monopoly of forcible protection. In the purely free-market society, a would-be criminal police or judiciary would find it very difficult to take power, since there would be no organized State apparatus to seize and use as the instrumentality of command.
