Posted on 06/06/2002 8:01:51 AM PDT by Sir Gawain
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Most people think that the state — i.e., government in the broadest sense — is a benevolent and indispensable institution. Few people think that state tyranny is a danger, and even fewer think that our actual states are tyrannies, albeit quiet tyrannies. Actually, many people have virtually never seen the word "tyranny" in writing. I once ordered a cake from my favourite pâtisserie, for a dinner where I had invited a few libertarian friends. I instructed the pâtissière to write on the cake, "Down with tyranny!" She asked me, "Does 'tyranny' take one or two 'n's?" My goal today is to answer three questions: First, what is the state? Second, what's wrong with the state? And third, can we get rid of that thing?
What is the state?We need some operational definition of the state to help us analyze, and make sense of, the general phenomenon we are considering. Sociologist Max Weber provided a well-known definition: the state, he wrote, is an organization that "(successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a given territory."[1] Although this definition looks neat, the ideas of "legitimacy" and a "successful claim" are redundant — at least if legitimacy is taken in a positive, as opposed to normative, sense. For if the claim is successful, it must be that the monopoly of force is judged to be legitimate by those whose support is necessary for the state to rule. Anthony de Jasay, the contemporary economist and author of The State, suggests solving the problem by defining the state as simply "the organization in society which can inflict sanctions without risk of disavowal and can disavow sanctions by others."[2] This kind of definition does not allow us to answer the following questions: Is the European Union a state, or are the states to be found among its individual members? Is the United States a state, or an association of states? Are associations of states states themselves? Can we talk about the Canadian state, or is each province ruled by its own state? Is the mafia "a state within a state"? This problem is solved by defining the state in a way that allows for degrees of "stateness," just as there are degrees of nearly everything in life (a least from an economic viewpoint). The state is then defined as an organization that can inflict sanctions with relatively little risk of disavowal, which amounts to thinking in terms of a "near monopoly" of force. This concept of the state encompasses not only the modern Nation-State, but also less structured and centralized states. We are interested in organized political power in general, not just in the specific form it has taken in modern times. In this perspective, the state and organized political power are coextensive. The important point is that whatever the definition of the state, it cannot avoid the notions of force or coercion. You cannot have a state that does not use force. The state is based on force. We tend to forget this because the state is so powerful that most people don't openly disobey because they know they don't stand a chance.
What's wrong with the state?The main justification for the state is that some exclusivity in the use of force is needed in order to minimize violence in society. Otherwise, as Thomas Hobbes explained,
This theory corresponds to the conventional wisdom about the state, as recently formulated by Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel of New York University, in their book The Myth of Ownership.[4] The two professors argue that "individual citizens don't own anything except through laws that are enacted and enforced by the state."[5] Without the state, this argument claims, our total incomes would be much lower than our present after-tax incomes. Thus, taxes are not theft because the incomes they represent would not exist without the state. Taxes only represent payment for the state's income-producing services. American economist Mancur Olson has given a precise economic formulation of this theory. Under anarchy, he argues à la Hobbes, roving bandits would plunder producers. If a sedentary bandit defeats the roving bandits and is relatively certain of his continuing monopoly of theft, he will confiscate less because he wants to maintain the productive capacity of his subjects. He will not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. The sedentary bandit — i.e., the state — will take less than 100% of the increase in production that his protection makes possible, simply because a 100% expropriation rate would kill any incentive to produce and nothing would get produced. Consequently, it is in the interest of everybody that the state replaces roving bandits: everybody will end up with more after-tax income than otherwise.[6] Talking about the state in terms of a gang of bandits is the beginning of wisdom. I have discovered that talking about "the tyrant" instead of saying politely "government" or "the state" often has a great pedagogical impact. My accountant, for example, now says "the tyrant" when he talks about the taxman — at least when he is with me. The Olson model of the state depends on two crucial assumptions: first, that no non- state institution can protect private property against roving bandits; second, that the state, i.e., the sedentary bandit who nearly monopolizes force, will not use its power to reduce popular welfare compared to what it would have been under anarchy. The first assumption, I will review later when I talk about whether we can get rid of the state. As for the second assumption, it has been often challenged, most recently — and more technically — by two economists, Boaz Moselle and Benjamin Polak.[7] Moselle and Polak challenge the standard historical and anthropological hypothesis that the primitive state was an improvement over stateless societies. They build an economic model showing that, although the state may make possible an increase in total production, popular welfare may drop. What happens is that, because of their power, the rulers are able to confiscate from the populace more than the increased production generated by protection "services" (so-called). The state, thus, may increase or decrease popular welfare, depending on how it redistributes the benefits of social interaction. Even assuming that the state's services — especially protection — do generate net benefits, we can now see what is wrong with the state. What's wrong with the state is that it will use its near monopoly of force to operate redistributions from some individuals to some others. This is not an accident, but is inseparable from the very nature of the state as a near monopoly of force. The state will not only distribute the benefits it generates as it sees fit, but it may also make some individuals worse off than they would be under anarchy. It is true that no state can rule without the implicit consent of a certain proportion of the population, but this proportion is certainly much less than 100% and quite certainly less than 50%, so that the state necessarily exploits some individuals. The redistributive nature of the state has been one of the major demonstrations of the Public Choice school of economics, which developed since the mid-20th century under the impulsion of Jim Buchanan, the 1986 economics Nobel Prize winner. The Public Choice approach is based on the idea that the state is manned by ordinary individuals, and that it is meaningless to compare an ideal, perfect, benevolent state, with markets institutions plagued by egoistic individuals and "market failures." We must consider the state not as it should be — or, more exactly, as some think that it should be —, but at it is and cannot avoid being. The existence of the state creates a political market, i.e., a market for state favours. The state will redistribute in favour of the clienteles whose support the rulers need most. These privileged clienteles are not necessarily the poorest, nor the wisest, nor the sexiest, nor the most virtuous (however you define virtue). Now, what is the problem with the state taking from some and giving to others, forbidding certain acts and supporting others, crushing some lifestyles and encouraging others — i.e., what is the problem with state redistribution? After all, the state only modifies the distribution that would obtain under anarchy, and the latter does not have any intrinsic normative value (or, at any rate, we would have to demonstrate that it does). One problem lies in the new incentives the state creates: avoiding being on the wrong side of the redistribution wicket wastes resources through lobbying and similar activities (this is what Public Choice economists call "rent seeking"). Another problem is that, in the process or redistribution, the state becomes more and more powerful. As Bertrand de Jouvenel put it, "The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State."[8] Still another problem relates to moral standing of coercion, i.e., force or threat of force. If we admit that coercion is wrong or has to be minimized, a bias against state intervention follows. Other things being equal, the less state, the better. Here, we must answer an important objection: the claim that the contemporary democratic state — the kind we have in Western countries — is not motivated by the self-interest of the rulers, but is driven by the welfare of population. In other words, we have to consider the claim that the actual democratic state is not nasty, but that it is a Nice State, working in the interest of everybody. The short answer is that the state cannot be nice to everybody — except perhaps in its most basic function of preventing violence, if we accept that only the state can do this. The more interventionist the state is, the more it will work in the interest of only some parts of the population, against the welfare of the rest. When the redistributive state is nice to some, it is nasty to others. In fact, the Nice State pushes to its limits what is wrong with the state, i.e., its natural tendency to redistribute, and to gain power in the process. As Friedrich Hoëlderlin wrote, "What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven."
Can we get rid of the state?Can we get rid of the beast — the Minotaur,[9] as Bertrand de Jouvenel called it? We really have two different questions here: First, should we get rid of the beast? Second, would we be able to? The answer to the question of whether we should get rid of the state is yes if, and only if, the state is not indispensable to efficient social cooperation; if, and only if, other non-state, voluntary institutions could control hobbesian violence. There are many theoretical reasons to believe that the state could be dispensed with, that it is an accident of history or, perhaps, an inevitable stage, but only a stage, in the development of mankind. One strand of argument, illustrated by David Friedman's work, points out to the feasibility of private protection arrangements and the private production of justice.[10] We have partial historical examples of that, like the prosecution of felons by private prosecution associations in 18th-century England.[11] A second strand of argument invokes the more general idea of spontaneously evolved social order — I am tempted to say, à la Hayek, even if Hayek himself and his followers do not go as far as anarcho-capitalism.[12] A related strand of argument based on game theory shows how social rules and institutions spontaneously develop to solve complex problems of social cooperation of the prisoner-dilemma type.[13] Of course, a stateless society could only be anarcho-capitalist, not anarchist in the old, collectivist sense, which assumed that peace and equality would miraculously obtain. The problem is that we really don't know whether the state is indispensable or not, because we have no experience of anarcho-capitalist societies — or at least no experience of a modern, complex, anarcho-capitalist society — and no way to test the theory against reality. Until anarcho-capitalism has been tried, we cannot be sure that a stateless society is consistent with efficient social order. A few examples of unsolved problems: Would private protection agencies be able to deter aggressions from foreign gangs of thugs called states? Is private property useable without some public spaces? Are we sure that, as Rothbard argues, the worst that could happen if we tried anarchy would be a return to the state we now have?[14] Perhaps yes, perhaps no. This empirical uncertainty — the fact that we cannot talk about anarcho-capitalism without a lot of "should"s — has led me to be more prudent than I once was about the anarchist solution. The only way to know whether anarchy is efficient is to experiment it, but it is not obvious how this can be done in a world infested by organized gangs of thugs called states: it is far from certain that an isolated anarcho-capitalist society could resist invasion. Moreover, it is far from certain that any given state would accept to be dissolved. So, even if we should abolish the state, it is not clear that we can. This answers our second question: it will be difficult to get rid of the state because the states will probably not let the experiment proceed without a good fight. And when states fight, they often don't do it with exhortations and roses (this must be the understatement of the century in Orono, Ontario). Besides our lack of experimental knowledge of modern stateless societies, there is another problem that casts some doubt on our capacity to abolish the state, at least in the near future. This problem is that the state generates the conditions for its own indispensability. The habit of living under the state diminishes the individuals' capacity to fend for themselves, in the sense that private rules and institutions that help to solve social problems have been destroyed, or prevented from developing. For example, private solutions to health care production are unknown in many countries; in fact, in no Western country is there a completely free health care sector. Or think about how private education and the family have been strangled by state intervention. Constant state interventions and propaganda may even shift individual preferences in favour of statist solutions. Individuals end up being incapable of conceiving non-coercive solutions to the problems of social life. An interesting example of how regulation creates the conditions of its perpetuation is car driving in Albania. "Before the fall of communism," explained a Wall Street Journal reporter, "being a driver was a well-regarded profession. If an applicant had a good biografi, or official record, his name was forwarded to the military for approval. Training lasted a year and a half." Private ownership of cars was prohibited and, in 1990, there were only 5,300 cars and trucks in a country of 3.3 million inhabitants. With the fall of the regime, cars flowed into the country, and repressed people hit the roads. The number of deaths per vehicle climbed to at least six times the U.S. figure. Of course, people clamoured for state intervention to solve the problem.[15] If it is difficult to see how the state could be abolished, it is even more difficult to see how civilization could survive the monstrous states that are being built since the first third of the 20th century. Benito Mussolini hoped that the 20th century would be "the century of the State,"[16] and unfortunately his hopes were realized. It is also difficult to see how a minimal state can remain minimal, as the experience of the last hundred years shows so vividly. And how can we imagine the future of mankind with the crude, coercive, brute institution called the state? We thus have the following conundrum. On the one hand, we don't really know if the state can be dispensed with, and we cannot conduct the experiments that would settle the question. On the other hand, we know how the state is dangerous, and it is difficult to imagine the future of mankind under the yoke of Leviathan. The only solution seems to lie in creating conditions under which the state can be diminished until, hopefully, it will eventually wither away (as Marx hoped). Whatever we think of the size of the ideal state — say, from 0% to 10% of national production, as opposed to the actual 50% — we should work towards diminishing state power. And, of course, no measure should be approved, under any circumstance, that would give any new power to our kindler and gentler police states.
ConclusionTo conclude, we have seen that the state is founded on coercion and violence, although it is rationalized as the only way to avoid more of the same. What is wrong with the state is that it uses coercion to operate redistributions for the benefits of certain clienteles against other individuals. The challenge is not to abolish the state immediately, which is unrealistic and potentially catastrophic, but to shrink it as much as possible until, hopefully, it withers away. We must cut state powers as much as possible in order to break people's addiction to the state, and to create conditions whereby non-state solutions can be experimented. References[1] Max Weber, Essays in Sociology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 78. [2] Anthony de Jasay, The State (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998; first edition: 1985), p. 74. [3] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London: 1691). [4] Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel, The Myth of Ownership (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). [5] Quoted from David Cay Johnston, "'The Myth of Ownership': Challenging the Rhetoric of Tax Cutting," New York Times, April 21, 2002. [6] See Mancur Olson, "Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development," American Political Science Review, Vol. 87, No. 3 (September 1992), pp. 567-576; and Martin C. McGuire and Mancur Olson, "The Economics of Autocracy and Majority Rule: The Invisible Hand and the Use of Force," Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 34 (March 1996), pp. 72-96. [7] Boaz Moselle and Benjamin Polak, "A Model of a Predatory State," Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Vol. 17, No. 31 (2001), pp. 1-33. [8] Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Ethics of Redistribution (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1989; original edition: 1952), p. 72. [9] Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1993; first French edition: 1945), p. 3. In Greek mythology, the Minotaur was a monster shaped half like a man and half like a bull who, in the labyrinth built by Daedalus, was fed a periodical tribute of youths and maidens. [10] David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism (2nd Edition, La Salle, Il.: Open Court, 1982). [11] David Friedman, Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 267-274. [12] Friedrich Hayek's major work is Law, Legislation and Liberty, 3 Vol. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973-1979). [13] See Robert Sugden, The Economics of Rights, Cooperation and Welfare (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986); Michael Taylor, Anarchy and Cooperation (London: John Wiley & Sons, 1976); Michael Taylor, "Cooperation and Rationality. Notes on the collective actions problem and its solutions," in Karen S. Cook and Margaret Levi (Ed.), The limits of rationality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Michael Taylor, The Possibility of Cooperation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). [14] Murray N. Rothbard, For a New Liberty (New York: Macmillan, 1973), p. 247. [15] Stefan Fatsis, "Albanian Motorists Take a Crash Course called Driver's Ed. After Decades Without Cars, A Big Question Lingers: Which Pedal is the Brake," Wall Street Journal, July 29, 1996. [16] Benito Mussolini, "Fascism," Italian Encyclopaedia, 1932, reproduced at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html (visited May 22, 2002). |
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