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Society without a State - Mises Institute

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Society without a State

By Murray N. Rothbard

Posted on 12/28/2006

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[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the

American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP),

Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The

Libertarian Forum , volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF .]

In attempting to outline how a "society

without a state" Ï that is, an anarchist

society Ï might function successfully, I

would first like to defuse two common but

mistaken criticisms of this approach.

First, is the argument that in providing

for such defense or protection services

as courts, police, or even law itself, I am

simply smuggling the state back into

society in another form, and that

therefore the system I am both analyzing

and advocating is not "really" anarchism.

This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over

semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that

institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following

properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as

"taxation"; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the

provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area.

An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be,

in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define

anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive

aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose

the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the

expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of

other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other

depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of

individual rights.

Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have

been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout

recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to

itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial

jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be

supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have

historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be

opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that

have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not

necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts,

arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways.

Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical

coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is

fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked

by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against,

person and property.

The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only

institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically

acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals

or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the

voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2)

through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease

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or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers

do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me

to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the

association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my

membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my

property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the

state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive

depredations on private property.

Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in

some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in

some way "coercive." Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term

"coercion" can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute

for it "physical violence or the threat thereof," with the only loss being in

literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism

proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the

regularized institution of aggressive coercion.

It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive

source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging

from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of

religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In

short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, "claims and exercises a

monopoly of crime" over its territorial area.

The second criticism I would like to defuse before

beginning the main body of the paper is the

common charge that anarchists "assume that all

people are good" and that without the state no

crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism

assumes that with the abolition of the state a New

Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane,

and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will

then plague the society. I confess that I do not

understand the basis for this charge. Whatever

other schools of anarchism profess Ï and I do not

believe that they are open to the charge Ï I

certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with

most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative

and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which

maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it

minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the

criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great

legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime Ï

theft, oppression, mass murder Ï on a massive scale, then surely the

abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in

man and discourage the bad.

"Anyone who is

still unhappy with

this use of the

term coercion can

simply eliminate

the word from

this discussion

and substitute for

it physical

violence or the

threat thereofÈ."

A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or

statist, can work at all unless most people are "good" in the sense that they

are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone

were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could

succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed

to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully

any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted

to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the "nature of

man," given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time,

anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the

channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual

members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by

eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive

legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote

peaceful values in the minds of the public.

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We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of

anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we

take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show

how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more

efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most

difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state

must exist and act, even if it is only a "necessary evil" instead of a positive

good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against

aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally

necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and

enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be

enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of

protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons

and institutions on the free market.

One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals

such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption

that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or

difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net

liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short,

implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting

person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why

the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in

such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented

record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can

possibly begin to match the state's unremitting record of theft, confiscation,

oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers

can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and

their analogues through the history of mankind.

This point can be made more philosophically:

it is illegitimate to compare the merits of

anarchism and statism by starting with the

present system as the implicit given and then

critically examining only the anarchist

alternative. What we must do is to begin at

the zero point and then critically examine

both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for

example, that we were all suddenly dropped

down on the earth de novo and that we were

all then confronted with the question of what

societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose

then that someone suggested: "We are all bound to suffer from those of us

who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem

of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by

giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way,

with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones

family will be able to protect each of us from each other." I submit that this

proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family

themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence

of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones

family, the question of "who will guard the guardians?" becomes not simply

an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to

its existence.

"In a profound sense,

no social system,

whether anarchist or

statist, can work at all

unless most people are

'good' in the sense that

they are not all

hell-bent upon

assaulting and robbing

their neighbors."

A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to

forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for

observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of

goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were

the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a

radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast

successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many

radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be,

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where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques

they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no

sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a

precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market.

Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market

arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less

predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to

offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist

society.

One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology

makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the

case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private

lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light.

Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of

private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century,

another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes

charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have

to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be

automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.

Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes Ï in particular disputes over

alleged violations of person and property Ï would be resolved in an anarchist

society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the

plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the

alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the

two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff

and a defendant.

An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist,

has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority

consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if

everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were

guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is

omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or

lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be

accepted by the great majority of the public.

In the first place, a dispute may be resolved

voluntarily between the two parties themselves,

either unaided or with the help of a third

mediator. This poses no problem, and will

automatically be accepted by society at large. It

is so accepted even now, much less in a society

imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful

cooperation and agreement. Secondly and

similarly, the two parties, unable to reach

agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to

the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute

has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again,

there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the

present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome

procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing

numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy

and harmonious settling of disputes.

"New proposals such

as anarchism are

almost always

gauged against the

implicit assumption

that the present, or

statist system works

to perfection."

Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Arbitration has grown to proportions that make the courts a

secondary recourse in many areas and completely superfluous in

others. The ancient fear of the courts that arbitration would "oust"

them of their jurisdiction has been fulfilled with a vengeance the

common-law judges probably never anticipated. Insurance

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companies adjust over fifty thousand claims a year among

themselves through arbitration, and the American Arbitration

Association (AAA), with headquarters in New York and twenty-five

regional offices across the country, last year conducted over

twenty-two thousand arbitrations. Its twenty-three thousand

associates available to serve as arbitrators may outnumber the

total number of judicial personnel È in the United StatesÈ. Add to

this the unknown number of individuals who arbitrate disputes

within particular industries or in particular localities, without

formal AAA affiliation, and the quantitatively secondary role of

official courts begins to be apparent. [1]

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of

arbitration procedures vis--vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as

experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense,

then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. "In other words,"

states Wooldridge, "the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed

hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are

circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established

for the settlement of disputes over those rulesÈ. In short, a private

agreement between two people, a bilateral "law," has supplanted the official

law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a

rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that

"if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of

limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded

that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically

revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the lawÈ." [2]

It may be objected that arbitration only works

successfully because the courts enforce the award of

the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that

arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts

before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary

arbitration from being successful and expanding in

the United States and in England. He points,

furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant

courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which

successfully developed the entire body of the law

merchant. None of those courts possessed the power

of enforcement. He might have added the private

courts of shippers which developed the body of

admiralty law in a similar way.

$15

"The idea that the

state is needed to

make law is as

much a myth as

that the state is

needed to supply

postal or police

services."

How then did these private, "anarchistic," and

voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their

decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by

the refusal to deal any further with the offending

merchant. This method of voluntary "enforcement,"

indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that "the merchants'

courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be

sent to jailÈ. Nevertheless, it is apparent that È [their] decisions were

generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have

used them in the first placeÈ. Merchants made their courts work simply by

agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding

would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be

a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows È proved if anything

more effective than physical coercion." [3] Nor did this voluntary method fail

to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years

before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

that arbitration caught on and developed a following in the

American mercantile community. Its popularity, gained at a time

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