Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the great German writer and poet (1749-1832), on German unification (which did not happen until 1871), in a letter dated October 23, 1828: At the time of the letter Germany was still splintered into thirty-nine (thirty-six?) independent states. Goethe explains a conversation with Johann Peter Eckermann on the desirability of German political unity, that…

I do not fear that Germany will not be united; … she is united, because the German Taler and Groschen have the same value throughout the entire Empire, and because my suitcase can pass through all thirty-six states without being opened. … Germany is united in the areas of weights and measures, trade and migration, and a hundred similar things … One is mistaken, however, if one thinks that Germany’s unity should be expressed in the form of one large capital city, and that this great city might benefit the masses in the same way that it might benefit the development of a few outstanding individuals. … A thoughtful Frenchman, I believe Daupin, has drawn up a map regarding the state of culture in France, indicating the higher or lower level of enlightenment of its various Departments by lighter or darker colors. There we find, especially in the southern provinces, far away from the capital, some Departments painted entirely in black, indicating a complete cultural darkness. Would this be the case if the beautiful France had ten centers, instead of just one, from which light and life emanated? — What makes Germany great is her admirable popular culture, which has penetrated all parts of the Empire evenly. And is it not the many different princely residences from whence this culture springs and which are its bearer and curators? Just assume that for centuries only the two capitals of Vienna and Berlin had existed in Germany, or even only a single one. Then, I am wondering, what would have happened to the German culture and the widespread prosperity that goes hand in hand with culture. — Germany has twenty universities strewn out across the entire Empire, more than one hundred public libraries, and a similar number of art collections and natural museums; for every prince wanted to attract such beauty and good. Gymnasia, and technical and industrial schools exist in abundance; indeed, there is hardly a German village without its own school. How is it in this regard in France! — Furthermore, look at the number of German theaters, which exceeds seventy … The appreciation of music and song and their performance is nowhere as prevalent as in Germany … Then think about cities such as Dresden, Munich, Stuttgart, Kassel, Braunschweig, Hannover, and similar ones; think about the energy that these cities represent; think about the effects they have on neighboring provinces, and ask yourself, if all of this would exist, if such cities had not been the residences of princes for a long time. — Frankfurt, Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck are large and brilliant, and their impact on the prosperity of Germany is incalculabe. Yet, would they remain what they are if they were to lose their independence and be incorporated as provincial cities into one great German Empire? I have reason to doubt this.

This quote can be found in Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Democracy – The God that Failed, pp. 118-19 n. 22 of the paperback edition. Thanks to Randall McElroy of Catallarchy for typing up the quote. I commented briefly in response to one of Randall’s commentors who claimed that the case of North Korea refutes Hoppe’s argument that democracy is worse than hereditary monarchy.

I got back from Mises University 2005 early last night and, as reported, ran into the Dark Lord Himself along the return trip. I had a wonderful time and I highly recommend the experience to anyone. I met and conversed with a number of bright and interesting people, including Randall McElroy at Catallarchy and the Mises Institute faculty such as the brainy and zany Roderick Long and fellow Louisianian Walter Block. George Reisman and his wife Edith Packer Reisman were there as well. I regret that I was too forgetful and negligent to get photos with any of them, aside from the big group photo of all the participants. I also learned a great deal at the seminar. And, I am proud to say, I took the optional Mündliche Prüfung (oral examination) and passed. Here’s a list of all those who did the same.

(I’m in black on the far right. Click on the image for a somewhat larger and clearer picture.)

I was driving home from Mises University 2005 in Auburn, AL when much to my surprise I ran across Satan himself. What he was doing heading west in an SUV on I-10 in Mississippi I won’t venture to guess, but if you look closely enough at the license plate – my apologies for the blurry image but the picture was taken while driving and it was raining a bit – you will see that Satan says, “Choose Life”! 1 , 2

Well, I’m off to Auburn, Alabama for Mises University 2005. I probably won’t be blogging until I get back, although I’ll try to blog about MU while I’m there if I can get enough internet access.

Today I left a comment over at SOLOHQ on Heidi Morris’s article “Reason and Reality: The Logical Compatibility of Austrian Economics and Objectivism,” disagreeing with what I take to be mistaken views of Austrian economics by a couple of the other commentors. The article is interesting, and admirable in its attempt to bridge the divide between the two schools of thought on both philosophical and economic issues, but it is also a little superficial in its treatment. For instance, one of the major hurdles to such a reconciliation is the subject of apriorism. Rand explicitly rejected apriorism (or at least Kantian apriorism). It remains to be shown how (or even if) praxeology-as-an-a priori-discipline can be compatible with Objectivism. (I think it can be, although it may require a little reformulation.) I recently began work on an essay dealing with this very problem. I plan to submit it to JARS when it is finished. Keep an eye out for future posts linking to rough drafts.

To supplement my previous posts (1 and 2) on the subject of anarchy, it occurred to me that Constitutional Anarchy is probably a better term for what I have thus far called Republican Anarchy. It is not classical republicanism but constitutionalism under which the principle of the separation of powers properly falls. The term Constitutional Anarchy also ties in better with Long’s arguments (cited in my first post) that libertarian anarchy is a constitutional order in which the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances have been radically decentralized and carried to their logical and most efficacious conclusion. In this light, one can see Constitutional Anarchy as being possible within the three other categories of anarchy I have termed Natural Anarchy, Hobbesian State Anarchy, and World-State (or Universal-State) Anarchy. In the first, it could manifest as stateless (but not necessarily governmentless) libertarian anarchy. But in the latter two, in which the State achieves an increasing degree of monopolization, constitutional anarchy can manifest within certain states founded upon constitutionalism and the separation of powers and checks and balances become increasingly inefficacious due to the necessarily doomed attempt at artificially creating a merely superficial imitation of market competition and social power (as opposed to State power).

My original post was brief and hasty (a bad habit of mine I’m trying to break, and it obviously failed to convince the sympathetic but skeptical Chris. Although I cannot, at this point in time, write a full length article or book on the subject, I think it would be worthwhile to elaborate on my argument.

The key to elaborating a nondualist view of libertarian anarchy is not, I think, the melding of key Hayekian and Nockian insights regarding society, government, and the State. Although this point is important, the key lies in the recognition that there are different kinds of anarchy and that we can never really get out of anarchy.

The formation of an international system of states quite obviously does not get us out of anarchy. This point is widely accepted even by the positivist-empiricist community of international relations scholars. The international system of states is characterized as anarchic, because there is no overarching monopolistic authority to promulgate law, provide security, or resolve disputes. I have termed this category of anarchy Hobbesian State Anarchy. It’s most obvious anarchic relationship is that between states, but there are other anarchic relationships included in this category as well. The State and its citizens are in an anarchic relationship, for there is no overarching authority governing this relationship. In any dispute between citizen and State, the citizen must turn to the State (or some branch thereof) for the ultimate decision. Ironically, although one of the defects that Locke saw in his fictitious state of nature was that there would be no third party to resolve disputes (a defect because of the widely held belief that men should not judge their own case due to an unavoidable bias in their own favor), the monopolistic State always ends up judging its own cases! Moreover, the relationship between citizens of different states and between states and the citizens of other states is also anarchic for, I think, obvious reasons. Only if one accepts some sort of strained social contract theory a la Hobbes or Locke would have reason to deny these additional anarchic relationships. Hobbes and Locke see the State or Commonwealth as being one corporate body, thus eliminating the possibility of anarchic relationships within that body (even when foreigners are involved). Locke, however, did argue that if the sovereign violated the rights of citizens the Commonwealth is essentially sundered and plunged into a state of war. I do not think that the mystical union of the corporate body that is the Hobbesian or Lockean Commonwealth is true to the facts of reality, however.

The formation of a World-State, or a Solar System State, or a Galactic State, or even a Universal State (in the physical sense of the world) cannot get us out of anarchy. International anarchy (that between states) is eliminated, as are the anarchic relationships between citizens of different states and between states and citizens of other states. However, if it is a unitary government (only one level of goverment) then the citizens are still in an anarchic relationship with the State. If it is a federal system, the states and their citizens are still in an anarchic relationship with the Super State. The attempt to find an overarching authority for all socio-political relationships is impossible, for even the most universal State imaginable would lack an overarching authority for its relationship with its citizens. In my previous post I mentioned Republican Anarchy as well, but I need not elaborate on it here.

Thus, we can never really get out of anarchy. The formation of different kinds of states merely alters the kind of anarchy within which we live. The question then is not Statism or Anarchism, state or anarchy. It is actually Statism and the State that introduce the dualistic false dichotomoy between living under law and order with the State or in chaos and disorder with anarchy. Statism introduces and/or perpetuates such dualisms as producers and pseudo-producers, wealth-makers and wealth-appropriators, masters and slaves, self-sacrifice vs. other-sacrifice, and many more. Insofar as anarchists have made their arguments along similar lines, using this false dichotomy (albeit while reversing the concommitants of law/order/prosperity and chaos/disorder/misery), they are mistakenly adopting the very dualistic premise of Statism.

We are always in some sort of anarchy. If there is a dualism inherent in libertarian anarchism, it is between society and the State or a free society and the State, and not between Market and State or Anarchy and State. But there are three major reasons why I do not believe there is a dualism here.

1) The primary political choice in this context is between which kind of anarchy is preferrable – Natural Anarchy, Hobbesian State Anarchy, or World-State Anarchy – not which kind of State is preferrable, or whether State or Anarchy is preferrable. The category of Natural Anarchy is not necessarily a libertarian anarchy; that would depend upon the kinds of institutions prevailent in a naturally anarchic society. There could be liberty, law, order, and flourishing, or there could be chaos, disorder, frequent initiation of force, and before long the rise of states and the shift to a different kind of anarchy.

2) Yes, there is a necessary mutual opposition between State and society, but the State is merely one organization/institution within society. It is not the only group of individuals/organizations/institutions (or even single individuals) that operates by the initiation of force and, thus, the violation of rights. And there are different kinds of states. There are also countless organizations and institutions within society that do not operate by the initiation for force. Ultimately, however, society is just a large number of individuals existing within certain social and structural relationships. The apparent opposition between State and society, and between other coercive organizations and society, boils down to an opposition between individuals who choose to live by the initiation of force and individuals who choose to live by voluntary exchange (even here we must recognize that many individuals operate by both methods). A free society along the lines of libertarian anarchism is one that exists in Natural Anarchy and in which a majority of the people relate with each other through voluntary means most of the time. What form government might take in such a society I will not speculate on here, except to say that law, security, and justice need not be provided only by market institutions but market institutions may make up a large part of such voluntary government.

3) The initiation of force is primarily a political (or structural level) concern. A fully nondualistic view of libertarian anarchy must take into account the socio-cultural and personal levels of analysis as well. Here we can recognize subtler forms of coercion, such as what might be called soft authoritarian institutions (paternalism, parentalism, tribalism, racism, nationalism, altruism, etc.), as well as psycho-epistemological, epistemological, ethical, aesthetic errors (and the socio-cultural institutions that encourage them) that hinder liberty and flourishing and promote statism. A truly ideal, free society will be one in which the majority of citizens possess and/or are encouraged by their social and structural institutions to be autonomous in the political and personal and social dimensions of their lives. I believe that an ideal libertarian-anarchic society will not be achieved, much less maintained, if we only attend to political and economic institutions. All three levels – the personal, t
he socio-cultural, and the structural (political and economic) will have to converge in order to bring about and maintain a free society. We will not get free political and economic institutions until we get liberty-promoting socio-cultural institutions and autonomous persons, and vice versa. Snapping a finger and eliminating the State overnight will not a free society make. A revolution on multiple levels will be required and it will take time. Is this utopian? Not in the sense of being impossible (as prosperous socialism is impossible). But it is idealistic (and I don’t mean this in a pejorative sense).

Ultimately, I think that political theories that assume straight out that we need some sort of State, including that of Rasmussen and Den Uyl, move too fast. Politics is not primarily about the State, but about (and here I show my Aristotelian colors) human flourishing and, consequently, about justice and rights. Whether and what kind of government is justified or needed are secondary questions. I do not believe the State is compatible with justice, rights, and human flourishing.