http://www.lewrockwell.com/murphy/murphy19.html
Chaos Theory
by mailto:robert_p_murphy@yahoo.comBob Murphy
Throughout history, there have been countless arguments advanced to support
the State. None of them has been valid. This essay will address a certain
class of these arguments, whose sleight-of-hand consists in a definitional
trick. My purpose here is not to make the positive case for pure
laissez-faire, but merely to show that each pro-government argument is a
non sequitur.
Anarchy is the absence of government, both in political science and
everyday usage (it is the first definition given by Websters, e.g.).
Chaos, in the context of social science, refers to lawlessness, or the
absence of a relative degree of regularity in human affairs. (I say a
"relative degree" because, obviously, virtually all humans will always obey
the rule of, e.g., avoiding someone with leprosy or not slaughtering
every female in sight. The laws to which lawlessness is opposed are
generally meant to imply the sometimes irksome rules necessary for a civil
society.)
It should be immediately clear that anarchy and chaos are distinct things;
you can have anarchy without chaos (e.g. groups of humans from the Stone
Age if you subscribe to evolutionary accounts) and you can have chaos
without anarchy (e.g. the French Revolution, if you subscribe to historical
accounts). Any argument that conflates anarchy and chaos is thus invalid.
Before proceeding, I ask the reader to indulge me in a brief digression.
People often chide me for calling myself an anarchist, rather than a
libertarian. The term anarchy conjures up images of atheist nuts who go
around throwing bombs. Wouldnt it be much more palatable to make appeals
for liberty, rather than for anarchy?
Sure it would; but Im not running for class president. (I tried that once.
I had the funniest posters an eighth-grader ever designed, and I posted
them in the bathroom, where everyone would be sure to see! The other kids
peed on them. I didnt win. Is that why Im so bitter?)
Also, the statists have had quite a time of stealing labels. The good guys
used to be the "liberals." No longer. The good guys used to be the ones
championing ever more "rights" for the individual. No longer. The very word
liberty has been raped, and I have no doubt that libertarian can be
perverted to mean whatever the ruling class wants it to mean.
Aside from the danger of devious usage, there is also the legitimate
distinction that must be made between those who advocate a "night watchman"
state which merely enforces property rights and those who favor
complete abolition of government. Many people of the former group refer to
themselves as libertarians. (They are inconsistent and confused, of course,
but thats okay. Theyll come around.)
Thus, to avoid any possible confusion, I advocate anarchy, pure and simple.
(Also, it sounds tough to say you are an anarchist. Well, it looks tough in
print. It wont help you in a fight or anything.)
I should also mention that anarchy is not a good of itself; what I really
desire is the truly free society. Its just that, in my opinion, only
anarchy can achieve this. So, in terms of ethics or morality, I would say
the highest end is freedom. But in terms of political science dealing
with forms of government I would say the goal is anarchy. (To quote my
friends bumper sticker: "Theres no government like no government.") This
is somewhat analogous to the approach of Friedrich Hayek, who believed in
democracy as the best means to a (relatively) free society. Although he was
wrong in this conclusion, he was not so naive as to worship democracy per
se.
Lastly: Certain wise-alecks think they can refute my ideal of "absolute
freedom" with a flippant syllogism. One of my smug conservative professors
at Hillsdale College (which had a plaque in the library espousing the ideal
of "Ordered Liberty," which struck me as akin to "Partial Pregnancy")
offered an argument along the following lines: You cant have absolute or
total freedom, because if Im free to kill you, then you cant be free to
live.
This is the sort of strawman logic you expect from sophomore philosophy
majors (also prevalent at Hillsdale), which goes through only on a twisted
definition of freedom. Imagine the scene from Mad Max, where Mel Gibson
gets thrown into the cage to fight that huge brute. (You know, when
everyone starts chanting, "Two men enter, one man leave!")
Now suppose the "referee" says to the combatants, "All right guys, anything
goes!"
My question: Would it be legitimate for Gibson, as hes getting his head
smashed in, to complain to the ref: "Liar! You said anything goes! I wanted
to recite Hamlet!" Of course not. Yet this is precisely the argument of my
college professor.
So, when I say I desire a society of total freedom, I mean a society where
people respect the property of others. I do not mean the physically
impossible situation where two people both eat the same piece of pizza, or
where people have the "freedom" to jump over the Moon.
Finally, on to my main point. One of the most frequent statist tricks is
the following: (1) The government assumes the responsibility of X. (2) The
government screws up horribly. (3) The government cites the mess as proof
of the necessity for government action.
(For example, after every plane crash, people demand the FAA gets more
funding. After the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy, an ex-CIA
agent wrote an Op-Ed piece explaining that budget hikes were necessary to
update the maps. Imagine if Firestone, after the recall fiasco, explained
that it needed to raise its prices in order to provide safer tires. Im
sure Ralph Nader would give them a thumbs-up.)
P.J. ORourke, in his funny book,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0871137607/lewrockwell/Eat the
Rich, has a chapter called "Bad Capitalism," in which he says that a
certain country (Albania?) is the victim of a giant Ponzi scheme i.e. you
cant have too much economic freedom. Although ORourke doesnt explain how
a Ponzi scheme can make the group as a whole poorer (the original Ponzi,
after all, got rich thats why he started his scheme), his basic message
is a good one, so Im not too bothered by his slight error.
The same cannot be said for Ian Fisher, who wrote an August 10th article
for the NY Times entitled, "Somali Businesses Stunted by Too-Free
Enterprise." After detailing the thriving business competition in Somalia,
Fisher sadly relates:
What Somalia does not have is a government...[making] it the worlds purest
laboratory for capitalism. No one collects taxes. Business is booming.
Libertarians of the world, unite!
So it may come as a surprise that business people in Mogadishu, the wrecked
and lawless capital, are begging for a government. They would love to be
taxed and would gladly let politicians meddle at least a bit in their
affairs.
If everyone is willing to pay for protection services, whats stopping
them? Further, its a bit fishy to describe a group of warlords who use
violent thugs to exact tribute as the absence of government, since a
government is, among other things, a group of warlords who use violent
thugs to exact tribute.
(I know, I know, the common argument against anarchy is that it would
entail the situation of warrior bands, and that I seem to be using a
definitional trick myself but this articles already way too long. All I
shall mention further on the Somalia example is this: Even if it were the
case that the Somalia situation can happen when we overthrow "government,"
this alone would prove nothing. I can just as well point to Nazi Germany,
Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and Pol Potian Cambodia as examples of
government gone bad. Take your pick.)
But the best comes from a recent haughty piece by that oh-so-clever Paulina
Borsook, who first quotes from her book,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1891620789/lewrockwell/Cyberselfish:
Quiz: where would you want to do business in 2000? In Russia where theres
no regulation, no central government, no rule of law; or in Northern
California where the roads are mostly well-paved and well-patrolled and
trucks and airplanes are safer than not...where people mostly dont have to
pay protection money, and the majority of law-enforcement personnel are not
terribly corrupt or brutal?
This is classic. Now Russia is cited as an example of pure capitalism? As a
land of no central government?? Give me a break. Borsook destroys her own
argument by saying the law enforcement personnel are not terribly corrupt
or brutal. (We overlook what a silly defense indeed it is to say, "The
majority of people under my proposed system will not be terribly corrupt or
brutal.") By this she is undoubtedly referring to the fact that relatively
more police officers in Russia are corrupt and brutal. Well then, were not
dealing with anarchy, are we, Ms. Borsook?
(Oh yeah: People in California do pay protection money: They call it
T-A-X-E-S.)
Borsook then continues:
I will instead mention a recent nasty epidemic of food-poisoning that just
erupted at a Mexican restaurant in San Mateo county....Turns out the
restaurant hadnt been inspected in more than a year because surprise!
it turns out budget cuts made it impossible to hire enough health
inspectors. But hey, government is the Great Satan and we all believe in
self-regulation and who needs taxes?
Again, I feel silly even pointing this out, but this sort of argument is
made over and over. Do you see what Borsook is trying to pull here? She is
ridiculing those who think the government does a bad job regulating private
industry. To demonstrate their error, she cites an example of government
doing a bad job regulating private industry.
Like I said, you hear this sort of argument anytime chaos erupts. So Bob,
youre opposed to government control, eh? Try telling that to the peasants
in Colombia! Ho ho, Bob, youre for anarchy, eh? Why dont you move to the
Gaza Strip?
The Colombian case is exactly the same as Borsooks Mexican restaurant. The
Colombian government taxes its citizens in order to provide police and
legal services, and it fails miserably. We must never confuse governments
impotence with governments absence.
And whatever else you want to call it i.e. unwarranted oppression or
legitimate defense of settlers you certainly cannot describe government
soldiers shooting children as anarchy.
Are certain regions in chaos? Sure. In anarchy? I wish.
December 1, 2000
Bob Murphy is a graduate student in New York City.
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R. A. Hettinga