The Abolishment of the State, Part 2

In this second installment of The Abolishment of the State I want to continue the discussion about what to replace the state with. In the last piece, I examined some real life examples of anarchist communities and the privatizing of certain jobs that do not require the use of the state. In fact, in E.S. Savas' book Privatizing the Public Sector, there are over 66 services that are available by contract from private firms (page 62-64); everything from traffic-signal maintenance, zoning & subdivision control, to welfare have been privatized in at least one location.

I would also like to touch upon another subject. That of restitution for victims of crime. I have written about this before in the second installment of my Tyranny of the State series but I'd like to go into a little bit more detail here.

I had said before that victims of crime should be more important than the criminal themselves because today's form of "justice" is to ignore the victim, while punishing the criminal. I feel this is an unethical system and victims should be considered a higher priority.

The concept of restitution attempts to solve the following problems:

1. To prevent further, more serious, conflicts and to avoid feuds.
2. To rehabilitate the offender back into society as quickly as possible and to avoid a negative stigma.
3. To provide for the victim's needs.
4. To restate the values of the society by addressing the needs of both the victim and the offender.
5. To socialize the members about it's norms and values.
6. To provide regulation as well as deterrence for the members of society
(Source: A Restorative Justice Reader: Texts, sources, context, edited by Gerry Johnstone, page 112).

In Dr. Mary J. Ruwart's book called Libertarian: Short Answers to the Tough Questions, she explains this form of justice well, so I will borrow some of her examples.

She cites Randy Barnett's article called Restitution: A New Paradigm of Criminal Justice which shows how restitution is "one of the most effective deterrents known" (page 6), and how a criminal could be placed into a "work prison” so they can pay their victims’ restitution.

If the thief goes into a "work prison," or even going to work for someone, he will work to support himself, and it will not be the responsibility of anyone to support him, as is now done with our stolen tax dollars. For anyone who thinks that an inmate could not make enough to do this, it was up until 1980 that the state of Maine's prison inmates were allowed to manufacture arts and crafts, making upwards of $60,000 per year "in today's dollars" (this book was first printed in 1998).

In this "work prison" a perpetrator would be allowed to choose among a variety of jobs, and multiple "work prisons" would be privatized and would act like a business. Each "work prison" could "compete" to gain inmates and more revenue, and the inmate could choose which prison paid more, which environment they like best, and which job they wanted to perform. This is by no means the only solution; others could be arranged, but this sounds like a good alternative to me.

Many might cringe at the thought of a person not being brutally punished for some transgression against another person, and I often wonder why that is. A friend of mine feels it's because of the idea that statism sprung from theism, and because theism focuses on sin and punishment, so too does the state. This certainly makes sense and I haven't read any other explanations.

I've also wondered if the desire for punishment was due to some innate part of our nature, but I don't think that's quite right. I've had my vehicle broken into twice and from personal experience I didn't really care about calling the cops because I didn't see the point; I most likely wouldn't get my stuff back and it was cheap stuff for the most part anyway. Mostly sentimental things. I knew the cops would mainly work to capture the perpetrator, and not get my stuff back, so I didn't bother doing anything.

There are studies that do seem to mirror my feelings. One was done by the Advocates for Self Government, and they found that 78% chose the free-market system, in which the victim receives direct restitution from the perpetrator and/or from an insurance company, regardless of what happens to the perpetrator – even if he went free (Source: Every Man and Woman An Island, by Robert Clapp, page 117).

The point that needs to be realized is that the current form of "justice," in which the victim is often forgotten, while the criminal receives punishment, seems very "natural" but only because that's all we know, and all that we've experienced. Many people don't seem to realize that the idea of victim compensation has been around for centuries, and only until the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Europe did our current form of law begin to take shape. Before that, there was no "set of rules imposed from above;" law was simply a "part of the 'common conscience.' When social bonds were violated, there followed negotiation for restitution and reconciliation. The law was a mediating process designed, not to allocate blame and punishment, but to reconcile conflicting parties. Law was not a separate institution but a diffuse process interwoven with all other aspects of life" (Source: A Restorative Justice Reader: Texts, sources, context, edited by Gerry Johnstone, pages 101-102).

Other than early western societies, others also used a restitution-based system for handling disputes. In fact, practically all societies before the emergence of the the state used this form of justice. An early written code incorporating restitution was the Code of Hammurabi from 2380 BC, which included restitution for offenses against property but not for personal crimes (Source: A Restorative Justice Reader: Texts, sources, context, edited by Gerry Johnstone, page 114). Another fact seems to be that "not until the Late Middle and Late Codes that death was established as the exclusive sanction for intentional homicide." Up until that time, "[o]f fifty to one hundred scattered tribal communities as to which the information available is of undoubted reliability 73 percent called for a pecuniary sanction versus 14 percent [that] called for a certain number of persons to be handed over to the family of the victim as a sanction. This too was actually a fine, though not a monetary one. One hundred percent of the Early and Early Middle Codes, beginning with the Salic code (around 500-600 AD) and lasting through the Anglo-Saxon laws (900-1100 AD), called for pecuniary sanction for homicide" (Source: A Restorative Justice Reader: Texts, sources, context, edited by Gerry Johnstone, page 115).

I'd like to jump to a different subject matter now. I discussed this some in the first part but I want to elaborate on it. Probably the only "Achilles heel" of anarchism is the fact that it has never been done on a large scale. There have been several anarchist communities throughout history, as I've shown (in The Abolishment of the State, Part 1), but not large enough to count as evidence for some people, I suppose. I think all other arguments against it are pointless with the evidence that I've presented in this first and second part. So with that, let me tackle why I feel anarchism hasn't been tried on a large scale yet.

I think a lot of it has to do with some kind of evolutionary sense that causes people to feel as if they need some kind of ruler, or person to oversee the community in which they live. They want someone (or a group of people) who are there to ask advice, lead, and comfort them. I think this stemmed from religion (which is by no means an original idea coming from me), with people feeling they needed some god to help protect them, lead them, and get advice from them.

I also think that the propaganda spewed forth by the government about how "bad," "destructive," and "chaotic" anarchism is distorts peoples' ideas of it. Those words that are often used to describe anarchism are nowhere close to the truth if people actually take the time to research it. Part of that propaganda is the brainwashing the government puts children through (especially in grade school) about "god and country." The pledge of allegiance, which children are forced to memorize, the flag waving, and the praising of the presidents and "founders," and the distortions of history that kids are put through during their early school years. This indoctrination is what I feel is partly to blame for so many peoples' insistence on a government. They are taught that it is a good thing when logic and facts state otherwise.

The afore mentioned facts will help shed light on how a society could be organized along anarchist principals, and I think, handily refute most nay sayers. The third (and last) part to The Abolishment of the State series will be on economics, or more specifically, laissez-faire capitalism.