Does anyone know of a good book/essay written by an ancap that proposes a theory about how government came to be?
He is no necessarily an ancap, but is libertarian. Franz Oppenhiemer 's THE STATE. It obliterates any notion that government was voluntary or had a "social contract". All government was formed by conquest.
Democracy is nothing more than replacing bullets with ballots
If Pro is the opposite of Con. What is the opposite of Progress?
Governments happen because people come to believe that they are necessary to maintain peace (the Hobbesian myth). For example, after the 30 year's war, people thought that the old system could no longer maintain order in Europe and the territorial monopoly system was established under aristocratic rule. The Icelandic Commonwealth, after some years of strife, thought that turning power over to the King of Norway would finally settle things.
Of course, in none of these cases was peace finally established, which poses a much more interesting question: how can governments sustain themselves?
The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation - On the nature of power
Governments happen because people come to believe that they are necessary to maintain peace (the Hobbesian myth).
This statement makes me see red (like a bull) because it seems to imply that governments form voluntarily. They don't.
There's a sense in which the ideology of legitimacy always comes into play after the formation of the government. It's not as if everyone in society unanimously gets together and says "we need a government", "government is necessary", "lets make a social contract" and proceeds to form a government. The actual formation of the government itself is always the work of an oligarchy, and there most often is indeed a period of conquest of some sort before the dust clears and a government is officially formed. At best, the people begin to asqueisce to the situation intergenerationally, but the formation of the government is not a result of them suddenly deciding that they need a government.
Brainpolice:The actual formation of the government itself is always the work of an oligarchy,
What is this oligarchy if not a previously-established government?
February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church. Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."
Stranger: Brainpolice:The actual formation of the government itself is always the work of an oligarchy, What is this oligarchy if not a previously-established government?
It's just a small group of people with good connections and money prior to it being a government. A gang basically. It's not a government until this small group of people obtain a territorial monopoly and something resembling the taxing power. The territorial monopoly cannot be obtained voluntarily, it always involves some degree of land theft, and the taxation is basically the institutionalization of extortion intergenerationally.
Prior to this process, to the extent that it is a benign institution or association, it is nothing more than a country club or something like that and it seems silly to me to call it a government. To the extent that it is not benign to begin with, it could be called a gang or something along those lines.
Here is what worries me: if it is true that governments form on the basis of legitimate private ownership, if governments start out as nothing more than a benign and voluntary organization to protect private property, then libertarians should all gladly endorse statism and concede to the Marxists (who think that private property is a fundamental pretext to the formation of a state). If libertarians wish to continue to hold such an analysis and still want to oppose the state, then they must become some sort of anarcho-collectivist or anarcho-communist and propose that private property must be abolished before the government can be abolished, since private property will allegedly always lead to the formation of a government.
Governments form on the basis of special legal privileges being granted. It is both voluntary and incompatible with private property. There is no contradiction.
Stranger: Governments form on the basis of special legal privileges being granted. It is both voluntary and incompatible with private property. There is no contradiction.
Calling it voluntary and proceeding to proclaim oneself an anti-statist is a gross contradiction. Being a libertarian who thinks the state is voluntary is a gross contradiction. If the state is voluntary, then you should become a statist by your own logic, since the state is therefore legitimate. Of course, the state is not voluntary or legitimate. The people who are subject to the authority of those who are legally privileged do not necessarily voluntarily agree to such privileges being granted or the authority of the people with such privileges. There is nothing voluntary about the interrelations between those with special legal privileges and those who are subject to the power of those with special legal privileges.
If you can't see the problem with what you're saying from a libertarian perspective, I don't know what else to tell you. This is a matter of simple logic.
Brainpolice:If the state is voluntary, then you should become a statist by your own logic, since the state is therefore legitimate.
That is just a confusion on your part.
Hoppe has written often and in depth on the subject.
Pro Christo et Libertate integre!
Stranger: Brainpolice:If the state is voluntary, then you should become a statist by your own logic, since the state is therefore legitimate. That is just a confusion on your part.
No, it is an awarness of an inherent contradiction that all anarchists that I know of reject. A voluntary state is a contradiction in terms. I reject the state precisely because it is not voluntary. If one believes that the standard for legitimacy in associations or organizations is voluntary association, then one must either reject the state on the grounds that it is not voluntary or construe the state as if it is voluntary and proceed to accept its legitimacy. One cannot have it both ways. This is a very simple matter of logic.
If you accept the preconditions and determinants for the formation of a state on the assumption that it's voluntary, you must accept the consequences of such logic, which is state legitimacy. If states form as voluntary associations, then we already are in market anarchism or the long-term product thereof. These are the logical implications of the premises in question.
Juan:Government exists only because a group of individuals - cops, the military, politicians - use force and fraud to control people. If there was no force and fraud involved government wouldn't last a day.
If this was a complete summation then there would be no difference between the government and any armed gang. Yet there are many armed gangs and only one goverment, why?
Obviously there is something more to this.
Why is it impossible to have a factual debate about the nature of government without someone objecting due to some supposed moral implications?
Peace
Better to deny reality and insist that zero individuals cheerlead for the state then risk "legitimizing" the devil.
I would perfer to see government as the armed gang that controlled an area so utterly that within a matter of generations it's true nature and beginnings as an armed gang has been forgotten. Some examples in which the state shows it's nature of Raw violence is to look at african military dictators, there you will see one way a government can begin. To even use the term government gives it legitimacy. Government "governs" with the capacity to violence which it uses without any opposition, no one is willing to fight the state not because it is overwhelmingly strong, but because people's moral evolution (Seeing "law" as an end unto itself rather than an end to justice is the premise apon which monopolistic law rests) is brought down over one or more generations, and they come to accept the armed gang that has controlled them as such a fundemental reality they begin to bestow apon it the same absolute justice they bestow apon a God, or Nature (The storm that killed your child is the same as the police officer who killed your child according to "The Law".).
THere are also some similarites to Stockholm syndrome, this is the essence of Nationalism (Note difference between Nationalism and Patriotism). Identification with the armed gang which enslaves you.
Libertarian Ethics explicitly says that anything that is voluntary is legitimate, hence if the state is voluntary, it is legitimate.
Perhaps a states "Framework" could emerge "voluntarily" but it couldn't aquire the means to maintain itself without coercion. It couldn't "become" a state until it began using it's special privilages, in other words, until it "acted" the part.
JonBostwick: If this was a complete summation then there would be no difference between the government and any armed gang.
Yet there are many armed gangs and only one goverment, why?
Juan: I think that the claim "the state survives thanks to fraud & force" is a factual claim.
It is, but it is also incomplete.
Mlee: Libertarian Ethics explicitly says that anything that is voluntary is legitimate, hence if the state is voluntary, it is legitimate.
Exactly what I've wasted multiple paragraphs trying to explain.
Brainpolice: If you accept the preconditions and determinants for the formation of a state on the assumption that it's voluntary, you must accept the consequences of such logic, which is state legitimacy.
If you accept the preconditions and determinants for the formation of a state on the assumption that it's voluntary, you must accept the consequences of such logic, which is state legitimacy.
You have so far omitted to detail how this logic unfolds. The reason is that it doesn't.
Brainpolice:If states form as voluntary associations, then we already are in market anarchism or the long-term product thereof. These are the logical implications of the premises in question.
States do not form as voluntary associations, but as voluntary submission to power. Know the difference.
If you have not yet done so, you must familiarize yourself with Etienne de la Boétie's discours de la servitude volontaire. (Discourse on voluntary servitude) It demonstrates how and why people voluntarily subject themselves to governments.
Of course the Mises institute has it with an introduction by one Murray Newton Rothbard: http://mises.org/rothbard/boetie.pdf
Stranger: If you have not yet done so, you must familiarize yourself with Etienne de la Boétie's discours de la servitude volontaire. (Discourse on voluntary servitude) It demonstrates how and why people voluntarily subject themselves to governments. Of course the Mises institute has it with an introduction by one Murray Newton Rothbard: http://mises.org/rothbard/boetie.pdf
I already am quite familiar with this work and Rothbard's introduction. I think that you're misusing it to actually establish legitimacy, when I interpret it as a brilliant suggestion for how to make the state obsolete via civil disobedience and an explaination as to how states perpetuate themselves once they are already formed. I do not see this work as demonstrating that the state is voluntary in its formation, it is only a demonstration of how the state is sustained via power-based incentives towards civil obedience once it already has been formed. But civil obedience should not be construed to imply voluntaryism per se.
Stranger: Brainpolice: If you accept the preconditions and determinants for the formation of a state on the assumption that it's voluntary, you must accept the consequences of such logic, which is state legitimacy. You have so far omitted to detail how this logic unfolds. The reason is that it doesn't. Brainpolice:If states form as voluntary associations, then we already are in market anarchism or the long-term product thereof. These are the logical implications of the premises in question. States do not form as voluntary associations, but as voluntary submission to power. Know the difference.
The logic does follow, unless you want to reject causality altogether.
Power (particularly political and criminal power), by definition, is not voluntarily submited to. It is exercised upon others, regaurdless of consent. People may asquiesce in that they cease to resist so that they stay alive or avoid particularly negative consequence, but that doesn't mean that one is "voluntarily submiting" to someone who holds a gun to your head and asks for your wallet and you give them your wallet. It's based on coercion, and while successful coercion is "submitted" to, it's not voluntary by definition. Liberty and power are dichotomous in principle - this is one dichotomy that I do not reject.
Someone joining the army, the police, or any government bureaucracy is not "voluntary submitting to power", they are becoming a part of the power structure itself, although most likely at a low rank. They are becoming excercisers of power themselves. They are not purely the subjects of power at such a point and the relationship between them and others not in their position is antagonistic in that others are subject to their power. Others do not "voluntarily submit" to their power per se by virtue of the very fact that they are subjects of it; power is excerised on them, regaurdless of explicit consent.
The State is definately voluntary for George W. Bush, but so what? If 99 people all agree to rob 1 person is this then a "voluntary" exchange?
Really...I don't see the controversy here.
I'm not sure what is being said. If you think I was justifying the state than I wasn't. I was explaining something. The State isn't voluntary, since it uses means which are coercive to maintain it's power. You are "entitled" to a government's protection, hence also forced to pay for it, coercively, without your approval.
Mlee: If you think I was justifying the state than I wasn't.
If you think I was justifying the state than I wasn't.
I know. I was pointing that your "If voluntary, then legitimate" argument is only valid if you presume universal consent, not merely majority consent.
I'm not too worried about someone arguing that the state is voluntary, either.
We know the state is not voluntary, by the fact that we can't disassociate from it.
Edit:
For this reason it is possible to say the State exist because of general consent without implying it is a form of voluntary association.
I thought I spelled it out pretty well. The difference is the difference between universal and majority.
Whats more likely, 99 people robbing 1 or 1 person robbing 99? Hmmm...
Noone consents to the state as such, as a whole, and the majority of people don't even vote. So I don't see how one can even argue that the majority "consents" to the state in any meaningful sense. The state is by no means an example of 99 people robbing 1.
Replace "consent" with "asquiescance to coercion" and you might make sense to me. There's a difference.
Brainpolice:The state is by no means an example of 99 people robbing 1.
True. Its 98 people helping 1 person rob the 100th person. The 98 people being everyone who happily pays their taxes and the 100th person being you.
Juan:So according to you 98% of tax-payers don't really pay 'taxes' but rather 'voluntary contributions' ?
No, according to me:
JonBostwick:True. Its 98 people helping 1 person rob the 100th person. The 98 people being everyone who happily pays their taxes and the 100th person being you.
Brainpolice:I already am quite familiar with this work and Rothbard's introduction. I think that you're misusing it to actually establish legitimacy, when I interpret it as a brilliant suggestion for how to make the state obsolete via civil disobedience and an explaination as to how states perpetuate themselves once they are already formed.
Brainpolice: Power (particularly political and criminal power), by definition, is not voluntarily submited to.
Power (particularly political and criminal power), by definition, is not voluntarily submited to.
You keep claiming conclusions that follow from definitions which do not, in fact, follow from definitions, making all of your claims unsubstantiated.
I am also not trying to establish the legitimacy of the state, you simply accuse everyone who points out the errors in your reasoning of being your enemy.
JonBostwick: Brainpolice:The state is by no means an example of 99 people robbing 1. True. Its 98 people helping 1 person rob the 100th person. The 98 people being everyone who happily pays their taxes and the 100th person being you.
You're essentially construeing taxation as voluntary or seem to imply that people "consent" to whatever the consequence of them paying taxes happens to be (an absurdity), which destroys the whole point of this libertarianism thing. It is not realistic at all to portray the scenario as if the vast majority of people are "gladly" supporting the state as a whole. Everyone opposes the state in one context or another.
Furthermore, this explaination totally leaves out that fact that the multitude are themselves subjects of the robbery in various contexts. Portraying it as the evil multitude indirectly plundering a small innocent elite is not accurate. In reality there is a very complex web of plunder extending in all directions, and the actual instrument of plunder itself is directly controlled by an oligarchy, not the multitude.
Stranger: Brainpolice:I already am quite familiar with this work and Rothbard's introduction. I think that you're misusing it to actually establish legitimacy, when I interpret it as a brilliant suggestion for how to make the state obsolete via civil disobedience and an explaination as to how states perpetuate themselves once they are already formed. Brainpolice: Power (particularly political and criminal power), by definition, is not voluntarily submited to. You keep claiming conclusions that follow from definitions which do not, in fact, follow from definitions, making all of your claims unsubstantiated. I am also not trying to establish the legitimacy of the state, you simply accuse everyone who points out the errors in your reasoning of being your enemy.
I'm simply pointing out that the logical implication of what you're saying is, in fact, state legitimacy. You've yet to directly address me pointing out such contradictions, you simply dismiss them and proceed to conveniently switch between two contradictary premises (voluntaryism and the state as a product of the consent of the multitude). There's no need to beat a dead horse, but it's quite simple: if one accepts voluntaryism as a principle, then one must accept whatever follows from voluntary interaction. If the state is, in some sense, the product of voluntary interaction, then you must view it as legitimate. This is very simple logic that you have refused to address. You have not pointed out errors in my reasoning - you have made some questionable positive claims, I have pointed out the errors of them, and you have evaded the challenge consistantly.
You cannot coherantly maintain both anti-statism or voluntaryism and the premise that people who are subject to the state "voluntarily" submit to the state at the same time, unless you want to essentially deny causality or destroy the meaning of "voluntary" entirely.
Brainpolice:You're essentially construeing taxation as voluntary
Are these equivalent statement?