To the vast majority of individuals the above question seems absurd. “Of course we need government,” they argue, and for various reasons. These reasons are what I'm going to look at in this installment of The Tao of Arizona Atheist. I've covered some (silly) objections in the past, but with this post I want to cover some objections that are usually considered to be insurmountable according to opponents of anarchism. With this piece it is my hope that once you reach the end these objections will seem illogical, if not outright silly.
As I noted at this post I plan on only covering a handful of objections but will provide good references for those interested in learning more about anarchism and answers to more objections than I cover here. I was originally going to write something much more substantial and detailed but when I realized there were already many books available detailing answers to these many objections I changed my mind about doing such a thorough piece. I figured I would explain some of the most common objections and then list book recommendations for anyone curious to learn more since most questions and criticisms I've come across are answered in the books listed at the end of this piece.
The State of Nature is “Nasty, Brutish, and Short”
This is one of the classic arguments against anarchism proposed by Thomas Hobbes in the 17th Century in his book Leviathan. It argues that without a state to curb our selfish, violent, and destructive natures society would become unlivable. The answer to this state of affairs, argues Hobbes and other statists, is to have a central authority delegate the rules and morality of society and enforce said rules. There is a contradiction with this argument though. If man, by nature, is selfish and corrupt, then those who were delegated to become the ruling class would also suffer from the same moral corruption.
To quote Francois Tremblay,
In either case, [democracy or monarchy] we must concern ourselves with the individuals that compose the ruling class. At best, we cannot expect these individuals to be any different in character from the other individuals that compose the general population. In the case of democracy, where the most duplicitous and manipulative individuals rise to power, we should expect rulers to be generally inferior to the general population in terms of moral character. […]
Now, if we assume that the state of nature is corrupt and leads to constant war, then, as Hobbes concluded, we have no reason to believe that ruling class individuals are exempt from this rule. If this is the case, then we should not desire for these corrupt individuals to gain the power to coerce an entire population to serve their interests. Any state composed of corrupt individuals must be corrupt as well. If everyone is corrupt and seeks to dominate his fellows, then eliminating the biggest source of violence and exploitation, the State, should be our first priority; not maintaining its parasitic existence! [1]
With the countless acts of police brutality and government scandals and examples of corruption the above seems to be only common sense but many people seem to fall for it despite this strong objection.
Some may object that this abuse of power is what the separation of powers is supposed to help curb, but history clearly refutes this absurd objection. Even right now as I type president Barack Obama has broken the government's own laws by bypassing congressional approval for military action, as required by the War Powers Act of 1973, for his war in Libya. [2]
The Public Goods “Problem”
The public goods problem (which the national defense issue is an example of and I will cover that here as well) is a major complaint about anarchism, but I do not see why this is so. I like both Tremblay and Friedman's answers to this question so I will quote them both on this issue.
Tremblay writes about how national defense is a public good and how it might be solved in a state of anarchy (which as I've said before is a situation with no government, not a state of chaos),
While it is true that common defence is, to a certain extent, a public good, the problem of its provision is actually very easy to solve. Individuals value their common defense, and security agencies would benefit by offering it as a part of a package deal for their customers. Anyone who wanted to support the common defense of their territory would buy such package deals. In practice, it is likely that the biggest consumers of security would end up subsidizing everyone else's defence to a certain extent, but the costs would be generally spread around society. In fact, it is likely that the security companies themselves would only legitimize other companies that participate in the common defense. After all, the very survival of their market depends on their territory remaining safe. If a foreign State ever takes over, it is game over for all these security companies. [3]
Aside from protecting their own interests (by staying in business) from potential invading companies I would like to add that the success of these security companies depends on their reliability of their services (defense and safety) therefore, being a business on a free market wishing to continue making profits, will do their best to provide the best service possible because if a security company fails in its duty to protect its clients then their reputation suffers greatly and they will lose masses of customers, if not go out of business all together.
David Friedman writes,
A public good is an economic good which, by its nature, cannot be provided separately to each individual, but must be provided, or not provided, to all the members of a pre-existing group. A simple example is the control of a river whose flooding injures the land of many farmers in the valley below. There is no way that an entrepreneur who proposes to build a dam can protect only those farmers who agree to pay part of the cost of the dam. An individual farmer may refuse to pay, arguing that if the others all pay he will be protected anyway and if they do not his contribution will not be enough to build the dam. The small probability that his contribution will make the difference between the dam being built and not being built, multiplied by the value to him of the dam, is not enough to justify the expenditure.
This is the traditional problem of the public good. It is a problem because if there are enough farmers like this, each acting rationally on a correct calculation of his own self-interest, the dam will not be built, even though the combined value to all the farmers is more than the cost of building the dam.
In our society the usual solution is to use government force -- taxation -- to make those benefited (and others) pay for the dam. The trouble with this solution, aside from moral objections to the use of force, is that the dam may be produced even when its total value is less than its cost. The government has no market mechanism for measuring the total value of the dam to the farmers. And since government decisions are made on political grounds, the government may choose to ignore cost and value entirely. In practice, public dams are often built even when the return on the capital spent building them, including a generous estimate of nonmonetary benefits, is far below the market interest rate.
There are several market solutions to the problem of providing a public good. For instance, the entrepreneur might estimate how much the dam is worth to each farmer, draw up a contract obligating each farmer to pay that amount on condition that every other farmer agrees to pay his share, and circulate it. Each farmer knows that, if he refuses to sign, the dam will not be built, since the contract has to be unanimous. It is therefore in his interest to sign. [4]
While national defense and “public good” issues seem like insurmountable problems, in reality, there are workable solutions that have been proposed.
Defense 'R' Us v.s. National Defenders, Inc.
Two security companies have a dispute, so how would they go about solving it? I've come across this objection myself and I've answered it I believe in the comments somewhere, but I like the thoroughness of Friedman's answer to this problem so I will quote him in full (I apologize but this makes up nearly an entire chapter).
He writes,
Inevitably, conflicts would arise between one protective agency and another. How might they be resolved?
I come home one night and find my television set missing. I immediately call my protection agency, Tannahelp Inc., to report the theft. They send an agent. He checks the automatic camera which Tannahelp, as part of their service, installed in my living room and discovers a picture of one Joe Bock lugging the television set out the door. The Tannahelp agent contacts Joe, informs him that Tannahelp has reason to believe he is in possession of my television set, and suggests he return it, along with an extra ten dollars to pay for Tannahelp's time and trouble in locating Joe. Joe replies that he has never seen my television set in his life and tells the Tannahelp agent to go to hell.
The agent points out that until Tannahelp is convinced there has been a mistake, he must proceed on the assumption that the television set is my property. Six Tannahelp employees, all large and energetic, will be at Joe's door next morning to collect the set. Joe, in response, informs the agent that he also has a protection agency, Dawn Defense, and that his contract with them undoubtedly requires them to protect him if six goons try to break into his house and steal his television set.
The stage seems set for a nice little war between Tannahelp and Dawn Defense. It is precisely such a possibility that has led some libertarians who are not anarchists, most notably Ayn Rand, to reject the possibility of competing free-market protection agencies.
But wars are very expensive, and Tannahelp and Dawn Defense are both profit-making corporations, more interested in saving money than face. I think the rest of the story would be less violent than Miss Rand supposed.
The Tannahelp agent calls up his opposite number at Dawn Defense. 'We've got a problem. . . .' After explaining the situation, he points out that if Tannahelp sends six men and Dawn eight, there will be a fight. Someone might even get hurt. Whoever wins, by the time the conflict is over it will be expensive for both sides. They might even have to start paying their employees higher wages to make up for the risk. Then both firms will be forced to raise their rates. If they do, Murbard Ltd., an aggressive new firm which has been trying to get established in the area, will undercut their prices and steal their customers. There must be a better solution.
The man from Tannahelp suggests that the better solution is arbitration. They will take the dispute over my television set to a reputable local arbitration firm. If the arbitrator decides that Joe is innocent, Tannahelp agrees to pay Joe and Dawn Defense an indemnity to make up for their time and trouble. If he is found guilty, Dawn Defense will accept the verdict; since the television set is not Joe's, they have no obligation to protect him when the men from Tannahelp come to seize it.
What I have described is a very makeshift arrangement. In practice, once anarcho-capitalist institutions were well established, protection agencies would anticipate such difficulties and arrange contracts in advance, before specific conflicts occurred, specifying the arbitrator who would settle them.
In such an anarchist society, who would make the laws? On what basis would the private arbitrator decide what acts were criminal and what their punishments should be? The answer is that systems of law would be produced for profit on the open market, just as books and bras are produced today. There could be competition among different brands of law, just as there is competition among different brands of cars.
In such a society there might be many courts and even many legal systems. Each pair of protection agencies agree in advance on which court they will use in case of conflict. Thus the laws under which a particular case is decided are determined implicitly by advance agreement between the protection agencies whose customers are involved. In principle, there could be a different court and a different set of laws for every pair of protection agencies. In practice, many agencies would probably find it convenient to patronize the same courts, and many courts might find it convenient to adopt identical, or nearly identical, systems of law in order to simplify matters for their customers.
Before labelling a society in which different people are under different laws chaotic and unjust, remember that in our society the law under which you are judged depends on the country, state, and even city in which you happen to be. Under the arrangements I am describing, it depends instead on your protective agency and the agency of the person you accuse of a crime or who accuses you of a crime.
In such a society law is produced on the market. A court supports itself by charging for the service of arbitrating disputes. Its success depends on its reputation for honesty, reliability, and promptness and on the desirability to potential customers of the particular set of laws it judges by. The immediate customers are protection agencies. But the protection agency is itself selling a product to its customers. Part of that product is the legal system, or systems, of the courts it patronizes and under which its customers will consequently be judged. Each protection agency will try to patronize those courts under whose legal system its customers would like to live. [5]
Anarchism Might Work On the Small Scale, but Is Not Practical for Our Modern World and Countries
This is another one of the most common objections I've received and Tremblay answers with the following,
Obviously, we don't value the use of “countries” as organizational units, as they are based on arbitrary borders, not anything relevant at the social level. The fact that the “country” level will cease to exist should not unduly concern us.
Beyond this simple rebuttal, the objection could be transposed into a scenario wherein the world is divided in little burgs that are hostile towards each other, spreading the same kind of mistrust that exists between States, but at a local level; in short, that Market Anarchy is not conducive to cohesion on a global scale. [...]
First, we can point out that statism has historically been equally problematic in the area of cohesion. Most European “countries” had to be unified from a number of independent kingdoms, which themselves had to be unified from a number of city-states. Besides, why should we value cohesion at all? Because cohesion engenders more cooperation and peace than the alternatives. Insofar as we can make a comparison, it seems that Market Anarchies have traditionally had the upper hand in those criteria.
Second, international business arbitration neatly disproves the claim that Market Anarchic systems are limited to small scales. Granted, an arbitration system is not quite the same thing as a whole society, but it seems to me that most of the new markets in a Market Anarchy would be somewhat less complicated than justice. [6]
Tremblay goes on with more answers to this objection but since this piece is not meant to be as in-depth as originally intended anyone interested can read his book to get his full response.
I would like to add my view about organization. I believe that before a society can organize itself it must first create a set of guidelines, which is done through the social contract, which will be the next topic under discussion in this series.
I hope I've given some idea about how society will go about doing this organizing, though, as I've said before, different anarchists have different views and not all agree on the same structure of society. However, the fact remains that ingenious solutions have been put forward. I think it's just the common individuals' ignorance of anarchism that they are convinced by these, and other, poor arguments against anarchism. I view it in a similar manner to many religious individuals who can't seem to understand how there is morality without their god, or cannot understand how evolution works. It all just comes down to their lack of knowledge on a subject. Or put more aptly, willful ignorance. I believe I can also point fingers at the state for the very effective indoctrination and propaganda that it spreads in order to keep the masses in line.
”But Who Will Build the Roads?”
I liked the title to Francois Tremblay's book so I borrowed it for this section's heading. This complaint is one of the most common and I've heard it often, of course, roads aren't the only things people have argued can't be done without the state. Security/Police, fire stations, and running water are among the many other examples that are often given. The fact is that most of these – and other services – have been successfully privatized in several cases. Here is a partial list of services that have been privatized along with the number of cities that have ditched their government for a better solution:
Refuse Collection...................489
Water Supply........................286
Street Construction/Maintenance.....206
Hospitals...........................107
Libraries............................88
Fire Services........................65
Full and Partial Police Services.....28
All of the above services, once privatized, not only ran smoother but cost a lot less than their government run equivalents. [7] Privatization is one answer to this common question and it most definitely seems to be an effective one. It must also be remembered that the government doesn't perform any of the above actions – people do. All governments do is pay the companies they contract with to fulfill the above services, and what usually happens when the middle man gets cut from the deal (in the case of privatization this is the government)? Services become cheaper and often more efficient, and this is exactly what we see when governments stay out of public services. [8]
Anarchy Has Never Been A Successful Way to Organize Society
This is completely false. I've noted some examples in the past and Tremblay has written about several other examples I did not cover, such as one striking example of the the successful 300 year existence of an anarchy in Medieval Iceland, which was composed of 70,000 people. [9] This surely will put to rest the belief that anarchism can only exist for short periods and with small numbers of people.
Conclusion
With this piece I've addressed six of the most common arguments against anarchism. It is yet to be seen how convincing these answers might be to certain statists but I believe I've answered their questions and given some workable alternatives to the oppressive ruling government. As I noted earlier about the several anarchist societies, I'd like the reader to take note of the fact that a number of these anarchist societies that thrived for a number of years occurred right here in the united states. Three of them were called Equity, Utopia, and Modern Times, and in his brief stories about them Harold Barclay, the former professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta in Canada, emphasizes the following fact,
What is most noticeable about these three communities is the fact that none of them failed because of their anarchism; all ceased to exist entirely because of external factors – conditions which would have crushed any community. [10]
Anarchism has been tried, and most importantly, has been successful many times throughout history. Now, with our technology a more connected community is now a reality, unlike the communities of the past, making anarchism a greater possibility than ever.
References
1. ”But Who Will Build the Roads?”: Market Anarchy Explained, by Francois Tremblay, Xlibris, 2007; 23
2. The failings of government are many and varied, but have been cataloged in many places. A few books that detail these many failings that I recommend are Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, by James Bovard and Police Brutality: An Anthology, edited by Jill Nelson, and in economic matters, The Government Racket 2000: All New Washington Waste from A to Z, by Martin L. Gross, and The Pentagon Catalog: Ordinary Products at Extraordinary Prices, by Christopher Cerf & Henry Beard
3. ”But Who Will Build the Roads?”; 126-127
4. The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism, by David Friedman, Open Court Publishing Company, 1989; 135-136
5. Ibid.; 115-117
6. ”But Who Will Build the Roads?”; 260-261
7. Every Man and Woman an Island: The Individual Human Being As Prime in the Universe, by Robert Clapp, Trafford Publishing, 2004; 119
8. See The Pentagon Catalog: Ordinary Products at Extraordinary Prices, by Christopher Cerf & Henry Beard, and Why Anarchism, Communism and Libertarianism are Pipe Dreams: My Response
9. ”But Who Will Build the Roads?”; 242-248
10. People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchism, by Harold Barclay, Kahn & Averil/Cienfuegos Press, 1982; 105
Recommended Reading
1. ”But Who Will Build the Roads?”: Market Anarchy Explained, by Francois Tremblay, Xlibris, 2007
2. People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchism, by Harold Barclay, Kahn & Averil/Cienfuegos Press, 1982
3. The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism, by David Friedman, Open Court Publishing Company, 1989
4. The State, by Franz Oppenheimer, Black Rose Books, 1942
5. Privatizing the Public Sector: How to Shrink Government, by E.S. Savas, Chatham House Publishers, Inc.; 1982 – While this book is not advocating anarchism the issue of privatization and its implementation is discussed in detail.
6. Men Against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827-1908, by James J. Martin, Ralph Myles Publisher, Inc., 1970
7. Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas: Volume One: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE to 1939), Edited by Robert Graham, Black Rose Books, 2005
8. Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas: Volume Two: The Emergence of the New Anarchism (1939-1977), Edited by Robert Graham, Black Rose Books, 2009
9. Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas: Volume Three - Volume Three is Pending
10. Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: A Historical Case, by David Friedman - accessed 6-24-11
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