ProIndividual
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- May 6, 2011
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I realize on the surface this title/statement/conclusion seems illogical and self-contradictory, but give me a moment to make my argument before dismissing it. In having a debate on the limits of the use of defensive force against the state, I wrote most of the following:
Anarchism is a philosophy, most of which denounces murder and terror as a "means to an end" (it's precisely the state's means/method). "Means to an end" is a nonsense argument...the means must be justified in and of themselves or they are simply not justified. Any end at all can be justified via the "ends justify the means" argument. Why? Because what end is justifiable is subjective entirely. What isn't subjective is the means to reach those ends, and therefore they alone must be justified independent of the ends. No ends are so great that they can justify themselves, and justification is by its nature an ethical claim. Ethics apply to actions, not thoughts (or in this case, goals trying to be reached by those actions). The fact an end might be unethical is not a function of the end, but the actions needed to reach that end and maintain that end. A boxing match is voluntary, whereas assault is coerced. Boxing to make a living isn't unethical because of means, not ends...and assault is unethical for precisely the same reason. The end is the same; to make a living by punching people in the face. The means are the defining aspect of the ethical or unethical nature of any act.
You get to a stateless society NOT via force, but via changing enough minds to reach a critical mass. Do you really think a stateless society can be made and maintained by simply murdering and blowing up state buildings? Would Europe have turned to atheism without the Enlightenment ideas that showed the ridiculous and horrific nature of believing in mythologies, but instead just murdered all the clergy and burned all the churches? Of course not. The people in the latter case would just rebuild the churches and name new clergy. You have to change hearts and minds, and expropriation and other violence isn't going to help that at all.
Do I think lands formerly held by the state and their cronies should be taken from them? The state-privileged cronies can't exist for long without the state, and no violent expropriation is needed for them to lose their ill-gotten gains. Who will stop a homesteader on federal lands when the state is abolished? No one. Who can maintain ill-gotten gains of state cronyism when the state no longer is there to give them such economic privileges? No one. Once the state is abolished, students will occupy State Universities, along with staff, and no one can or should stop them. But for them to do it to reach a stateless society will not only fail, but it will be horrible for anarchists trying to make our case to the masses.
Two wrongs don't make a right, and it is horrid public relations (PR). The last part matters just as much as the ethics here, as bad PR slows down the only route to a sustainable stateless society (changing hearts and minds).
And don't mistake a lack of initiated aggression against the mailman as pacifism. But some would claim killing the mailman is self defense against the state, which is bullshit, because the mailman isn't a threat to you, and because doing so brings you no closer to a stateless society.
We can't know for sure who would have what in absence of capitalist privileges and the state. The only way to know is to abolish it and let consumers make free decisions, which distributes resources purely according to making society happier, not according to where it is steered by force. I'm not interested in being a statist by another name, or living in a state by another name. The state is initiated force against those of no threat to them or others, and they do it for themselves and their cronies. How is becoming a one-man state (terrorist) or using statist tactics not making anarchists not-very-anarchistic?
The simple answer is, violent revolution is both unethical and pragmatically doesn't work to get us to a stateless society that can be maintained long term. It's a fit of rage without forethought. I get it, and sympathize, but it leads us to the fact it is a statist tactic to expropriate by force. It's not even necessary, given how consumer demand without state influence will destroy any formation of ill-gotten wealth, any incomes above consumer reward, and any market share gotten and held via capitalist privilege. Change minds about "crony capitalism" ("capitalism", if you prefer, as I do), and by way of that abolish the state/capitalist privileges, and then (and only then) will these injustices melt away justly and sustainably.
Individualists don't want revolution generally, because we see the empirical historical evidence that it has never helped anarchists (we get betrayed by our inevitably more numerous statist "allies"). We have to grow in numbers before a revolution if we want it to end well for us (not how it ended in torture, murder, imprisonment, deportment, exile, etc. for past anarchist revolutionaries). That requires changing hearts and minds, not force. And if we achieve this, and wait even a bit longer, we reach a critical mass where force is barely, or not at all, needed (because the state is an idea, not a real thing - it's just people oppressing other people).
The state is kept alive by a social norm and nothing else: the acceptance socially of extortion (taxation) and other threats of violence against competition and to keep tort liability artificially limited, being legal for some group but not everyone else. This logical, and thereby ethical, inconsistency is the state's lifeblood. It's how it is funded and how it is accepted. If you don't change that social norm via changing hearts and minds, your revolution is doomed to fail like all past ones anarchists took part in. ANYTHING that gets in the way of changing hearts and minds is "counter-revolutionary", including the violent revolution itself.
I will now end this post with a quote, to illustrate why expropriation and violence are largely, or not at all, necessary to reaching a free society (and I argue they are impediments to the only way to reach a sustainable free society; changing hearts and minds):
"Think about it: When the marketplace is really free and competitive (rather than constricted by the state to protect privileged interests), it is we collectively who decide who controls the means of production. We don’t do this in the legal sense, for example, by literally expropriating the assets of some people and transferring them to others. Yet that’s the effect of free competition and individual liberty.
In other words, the freed market would give traditional leftists what they say they want: a society in which free, voluntary, and peaceful cooperation ultimately controls the means of production for the good of all people.
What well-wisher of humanity could ask for anything more?"
--- Sheldon Richman
Anarchism is a philosophy, most of which denounces murder and terror as a "means to an end" (it's precisely the state's means/method). "Means to an end" is a nonsense argument...the means must be justified in and of themselves or they are simply not justified. Any end at all can be justified via the "ends justify the means" argument. Why? Because what end is justifiable is subjective entirely. What isn't subjective is the means to reach those ends, and therefore they alone must be justified independent of the ends. No ends are so great that they can justify themselves, and justification is by its nature an ethical claim. Ethics apply to actions, not thoughts (or in this case, goals trying to be reached by those actions). The fact an end might be unethical is not a function of the end, but the actions needed to reach that end and maintain that end. A boxing match is voluntary, whereas assault is coerced. Boxing to make a living isn't unethical because of means, not ends...and assault is unethical for precisely the same reason. The end is the same; to make a living by punching people in the face. The means are the defining aspect of the ethical or unethical nature of any act.
You get to a stateless society NOT via force, but via changing enough minds to reach a critical mass. Do you really think a stateless society can be made and maintained by simply murdering and blowing up state buildings? Would Europe have turned to atheism without the Enlightenment ideas that showed the ridiculous and horrific nature of believing in mythologies, but instead just murdered all the clergy and burned all the churches? Of course not. The people in the latter case would just rebuild the churches and name new clergy. You have to change hearts and minds, and expropriation and other violence isn't going to help that at all.
Do I think lands formerly held by the state and their cronies should be taken from them? The state-privileged cronies can't exist for long without the state, and no violent expropriation is needed for them to lose their ill-gotten gains. Who will stop a homesteader on federal lands when the state is abolished? No one. Who can maintain ill-gotten gains of state cronyism when the state no longer is there to give them such economic privileges? No one. Once the state is abolished, students will occupy State Universities, along with staff, and no one can or should stop them. But for them to do it to reach a stateless society will not only fail, but it will be horrible for anarchists trying to make our case to the masses.
Two wrongs don't make a right, and it is horrid public relations (PR). The last part matters just as much as the ethics here, as bad PR slows down the only route to a sustainable stateless society (changing hearts and minds).
And don't mistake a lack of initiated aggression against the mailman as pacifism. But some would claim killing the mailman is self defense against the state, which is bullshit, because the mailman isn't a threat to you, and because doing so brings you no closer to a stateless society.
We can't know for sure who would have what in absence of capitalist privileges and the state. The only way to know is to abolish it and let consumers make free decisions, which distributes resources purely according to making society happier, not according to where it is steered by force. I'm not interested in being a statist by another name, or living in a state by another name. The state is initiated force against those of no threat to them or others, and they do it for themselves and their cronies. How is becoming a one-man state (terrorist) or using statist tactics not making anarchists not-very-anarchistic?
The simple answer is, violent revolution is both unethical and pragmatically doesn't work to get us to a stateless society that can be maintained long term. It's a fit of rage without forethought. I get it, and sympathize, but it leads us to the fact it is a statist tactic to expropriate by force. It's not even necessary, given how consumer demand without state influence will destroy any formation of ill-gotten wealth, any incomes above consumer reward, and any market share gotten and held via capitalist privilege. Change minds about "crony capitalism" ("capitalism", if you prefer, as I do), and by way of that abolish the state/capitalist privileges, and then (and only then) will these injustices melt away justly and sustainably.
Individualists don't want revolution generally, because we see the empirical historical evidence that it has never helped anarchists (we get betrayed by our inevitably more numerous statist "allies"). We have to grow in numbers before a revolution if we want it to end well for us (not how it ended in torture, murder, imprisonment, deportment, exile, etc. for past anarchist revolutionaries). That requires changing hearts and minds, not force. And if we achieve this, and wait even a bit longer, we reach a critical mass where force is barely, or not at all, needed (because the state is an idea, not a real thing - it's just people oppressing other people).
The state is kept alive by a social norm and nothing else: the acceptance socially of extortion (taxation) and other threats of violence against competition and to keep tort liability artificially limited, being legal for some group but not everyone else. This logical, and thereby ethical, inconsistency is the state's lifeblood. It's how it is funded and how it is accepted. If you don't change that social norm via changing hearts and minds, your revolution is doomed to fail like all past ones anarchists took part in. ANYTHING that gets in the way of changing hearts and minds is "counter-revolutionary", including the violent revolution itself.
I will now end this post with a quote, to illustrate why expropriation and violence are largely, or not at all, necessary to reaching a free society (and I argue they are impediments to the only way to reach a sustainable free society; changing hearts and minds):
"Think about it: When the marketplace is really free and competitive (rather than constricted by the state to protect privileged interests), it is we collectively who decide who controls the means of production. We don’t do this in the legal sense, for example, by literally expropriating the assets of some people and transferring them to others. Yet that’s the effect of free competition and individual liberty.
In other words, the freed market would give traditional leftists what they say they want: a society in which free, voluntary, and peaceful cooperation ultimately controls the means of production for the good of all people.
What well-wisher of humanity could ask for anything more?"
--- Sheldon Richman
