The Objectivist case against competition in the market of force.
Among the many internecine libertarian debates, one of the most heated is that of minarchy versus anarchy. Although Ayn Rand did not identify as a libertarian per se, the Objectivist contribution to this debate is elucidating.
For the benefit of my libertarian friends—particularly my anarchist ones—I will be citing Rand at length. All quotations are from the chapter “The Nature of Government,” from her 1964 nonfiction work The Virtue of Selfishness. I encourage my readers, particularly the anarchists among you, to acquire a copy of this book and read the particular essay for yourselves. In case the reader has neither the time nor the inclination, here are the quotes I found most germane to the debate:
“A social environment is most conducive to [men’s] successful survival—but only on certain conditions… if men are to live together in a peaceful, productive, rational society and deal with one another to mutual benefit, they must accept the basic social principle without which no moral or civilized society is possible: the principle of individual rights.” (145)
Throwing the baby of society, division of labor, and modernity out with the bathwater of immoral actions of criminal men and tyrannical government is not the answer. Some libertarians advocate regressing to a meager state of subsistence agriculture on parochial fortress-farms in the middle of the wilderness. I wish these fellows good luck surviving and thriving under these conditions—they’ll need it!
“If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door… Peaceful coexistence is impossible if a man has to live under the constant threat of force to be unleashed against him by any of his neighbors at any moment.” (146-147)
I share Rand’s Hobbesian conception of the state of nature and am grateful that I do not feel the need to walk around loaded for bear. Instead, I am able to focus on producing value, bettering myself, and flourishing with my family, friends, and significant other. No need to look over my shoulder every 10 seconds—what an innovation!
“If a society left the retaliatory use of force in the hands of individual citizens, it would degenerate into mob rule, lynch law and an endless series of bloody private feuds or vendettas.” (147)
This seems to me to be self-evidently true and empirically verified. Globally, the countries with the highest homicide rates are those with ineffective governments who have failed to monopolize the use of force. Nationally, consider the most dangerous areas in the U.S.: neighborhoods plagued by gang activity and turf wars that the police have failed to bring to heel.
“A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control, i.e., under objectively defined laws.” (147)
To prevent a government from becoming the biggest bully on the block—a pressing concern and the anarchists’ best argument against the state—its use of force must be subordinated to the rule of law instead of the caprice of man. Doing this is no easy task and requires a system of checks and balances, careful alignment of political incentives applying the insights of public choice theory, a rights-protecting constitution, and a comprehension of the philosophical basis for government.
The following three quotes treat this subject:
“A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; a government official may do nothing except that which is legally permitted. This is the means of subordinating ‘might’ to ‘right.’” (148)
“Such, in essence, is the proper purpose of a government: to make social existence possible to men, by protecting the benefits and combating the evils which men can cause to one another.” (151)
“… the purpose of law and of government is the protection of individual rights. Today, this principle is forgotten, ignored and evaded. The result is the present state of the world, with mankind’s retrogression to the lawlessness of absolutist tyranny, to the primitive savagery of rule by brute force.” (152)
That is to say, I am not defending the rights-violating statism witnessed, in varying degrees of depravity, across the world today. I am saying, however, that individual rights are upheld and, consequently, human flourishing occurs to a far greater extent in the United States of America than in Iran, China, and North Korea.
“Anarchy, as a political concept, is a naive floating abstraction: for all the reasons discussed above, a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along and who would precipitate it into the chaos of gang warfare… even a society whose every member were fully rational and faultlessly moral, could not function in a state of anarchy; it is the need of objective laws and of an arbiter for honest disagreements among men that necessitates the establishment of a government.” (152)
Anarchist proponents of competing governments “declare there should be a number of different governments in the same geographical area, competing for the allegiance of individual citizens, with every citizen free to “shop” and to patronize whatever government he chooses…” I fail to see how this unstable equilibrium in the use of force could result in anything other than a war of all against all, without a single, monopolistic, rule-bound leviathan to overawe all to respect the rights of all.
I invite my anarchist friends and colleagues to explain where I erred in my analysis and/or why, despite all these flaws, anarchy is nonetheless superior to minarchy.
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