Feminism and utopian socialism

Although most of Why I Became a Feminist Socialist is incomprehensible mush, Hilary Wainwright does make some important points. It grates, I think, for a self-selected elite to simply impose "socialism" on a recalcitrant, obdurate population. The whole point of socialism is that it should not just be better for the masses of people, but clearly better, and socialism requires the enthusiastic support of the masses of people from the very beginning through to the end. And once in power, simply setting up another oligarchy will not bring about socialism: no oligarchy, however "Marxist" in its internal ideology, will ever voluntarily transfer power to the people.

I really cannot tell what Wainwright is for, but I know she's categorically against the use or capture of state power. "I rejected both the Soviet model and the Harold Wilson, Fabian model. . . . I rejected the so-called Leninist relations of state power and party power, and the Fabian understandings of power whereby the state delivered concessions and policies, rather than power coming from within ourselves." Wainwright seems to reject both a revolutionary capture of the state and a gradual reformist transformation of the state; presumably, she also rejects a perpetuation of the already existing capitalist state. We cannot, of course, build anything even vaguely resembling socialism under the thumb of the capitalist state; the capitalists will simply, and from their point of view justifiably, violently suppress anything that threatens the structure of capitalism.

The only thing left is to abandon the state entirely, and try to then build socialism with nothing that even vaguely resembles a state. But this strategy is profoundly problematic.

First, how do we abandon the state? The capitalists are nothing if not clever. The capitalist state exists not just to enforce the domination of the bourgeoisie and the subjugation of the workers; the state exists to enforce relations of domination and subjugation throughout society. Whites, especially white men, dominate and subjugate black people, men dominate and subjugate women, mental workers dominate and subjugate manual workers, etc. ad nauseam. Even if they want to reform the state, anyone with even a little bit of privilege will always support the idea of the state. The very best that socialists at the individual can do is to contract the legitimacy of the state around only those with a little privilege. But then who fights that state?

There is a problem in Wainwright's article that echoes through the infantile anarchism (including Libertarianism) in general: the distinction between the state as an institution of violence and the state as an institution of domination. But there is no objective distinction between violence and domination: violence is objective, but domination is just violence one does not like, in the service of ends that one does not like, or contrary to one's interests. Thus, racists see state violence used to end racism as domination: surely the state demands that they give up their own interests without satisfactory compensation, ultimately at the barrel of a gun. Domination is entirely relative and subjective; any "objective" construction of domination that does not equate violence and domination must rest entirely on subjective criteria. Thus, The definition of the state as an institution to legitimize domination, is incoherent. Domination is just illegitimate violence, and state violence is legitimate by definition.

Violence by itself precedes the state. Any individual can use violence against another individual. Even technologically (there is no such thing as an impregnable defense), it is logically and physically impossible to eliminate violence. Because the criterion of domination is incoherent, we are left with Weber's definition of the state as a particular kind of institutional relationship to violence: the state is an institution (or coherently connected set of institutions) that monopolize the legitimate use of violence. (Note that Weber's definition does not entail that any violence employed by individuals who comprise the state institution(s) is necessarily legitimate; this definition entails only that all legitimate violence is necessarily employed or sanctioned by the state.) If we get rid of the Weberian state, then we must distribute rather than monopolize the legitimate use of violence. While the monopolization of violence entails some serious problems, its distribution does not seem to solve those problems; only the lunatic Libertarian fringe even tries to theorize about distributing the legitimation of violence. The infantile left-anarchists merely shut their eyes to the problem of violence, pretending, in the most literally infantile sense, that if they cannot see it, it does not exist.

The implementation of socialism will require using violence to dominate and subjugate the bourgeoisie, who themselves cheerfully use violence to dominate and subjugate every other class, especially the proletariat. We can hold hands and sing Kumbaya as much as we want (and, under certain circumstances, that's an effective tactic), but at a certain point we have to say, "Comply or die." This is a harsh truth, but it's a truth that actually exists, however much we close our eyes to it. If you are without money and hungry or homeless, the state forbids you avail yourself of food and shelter; if you do not comply, the state will, in extremis,* kill you. The socialists must say the opposite: the state forbids you to withhold food or shelter from someone in need; if you do not comply, the state will, in extremis, kill you. The capitalist state forbids the workers from seizing the means of production; the socialist state forbids individuals from seizing absolute control of the means of production.

*Of course, we usually don't want to jump right to deadly force; however, "intermediate" force requires the real availability of deadly force if the intermediate force is resisted. A person will allow the police to imprison them only because the police can and in fact will kill them if they resist imprisonment.

The difference between capitalism and socialism is not that one or the other uses or abjures some means. The difference can be only in the ends to which those means are used. All of bourgeois "morality" is simply the social, cultural, and psychological deprecation of certain means when used to overthrow capitalism; those exact same means are "legitimately" used to perpetuate capitalism. And, similarly, socialism must use those same means to overthrow capitalism, because the means of violence are, ultimately, the only means there are.

Even nonviolent dispute resolution requires a foundation of violence. I cannot negotiate with my neighbor unless, at some level, violence of some kind is available to settle the dispute; otherwise, I can just say, "Fuck you. I'll do as I please." Not everyone always says so, but some people do always say so, and everyone sometimes says so. This violence can take the raw form of a police officer with a pistol enforcing the order of a court, or social exclusion from economic life, just as deadly as a pistol. Arguably, the pistol is more honest; as capitalism has shown us, it's too easy psychologically to ignore the violence inherent in economic and social marginalization.

Fundamentally, Wainwright's supposed abjuration of state violence just promoties quietism to preserve her own privilege.

What is a voluntary agreement?

Today, a rather stupid anonymous commenter left this message in response to my post, The Libertarian Argument:

How can you not see the difference between a lease, which was signed by the tenant, and a decree that was forced upon a citizen by the majority? One is a voluntary agreement, the other is force.

The commenter makes a number of rather obvious errors, most notably that that Libertarian argument does not usually consist of how to justify the initiation of coercion, but rather that the initiation of coercion is intrinsically unjustifiable. Of course, as I discuss in the post, the Libertarian argument is fundamentally in bad faith: agreements they don't like are unjustifiable because they entail the initiation of coercion; agreements they like aren't the initiation of coercion because they are justified. I find this "argument" as tedious and stupid as Divine Command Theory.

But this comment, while completely stupid, does suggest a more interesting question: what is an agreement? What do agreements mean? When is an agreement voluntary? The Libertarian position is straightforward: Agreements are what Libertarians want them to be, they mean what Libertarians want them to mean, and they're voluntary when Libertarians like them (and involuntary when they don't like them). Libertarians interpret "voluntary agreement" like Christians interpret the Bible.

But there are more subtle issues (more subtle than a Libertarian is like shorter than Manute Bol) about agreements.

What is a voluntary agreement and what does it mean? Well, first of all, an agreement has to provide mutual benefit: all parties to an agreement have to be better off overall than if the agreement did not happen. Second, all parties to a voluntary agreement must be able to forego the agreement without harm. Finally, an agreement cannot be fully explicit: there must be a social process to interpret the meanings of agreements. But even with this definition, there are still notable controversies.

First, although an agreement has to provide mutual benefit, there's no determinist how that mutual benefit is allocated among the parties. The allocation of the "surplus benefit" is a matter of bargaining power, not logic, which then raises the question: what are legitimate and illegitimate ways of obtaining and exercising bargaining power? Is possession of money legitimate bargaining power? How about votes? How about violence, threatened or actual? People have any number of positions on these issues, but there's no single rationally correct answer; they're political questions.

Second, what constitutes "harm"? It's relatively uncontroversial that getting killed or beaten constitutes harm, so that giving my wallet to a mugger who points a gun at me is not a voluntary agreement. But what about natural harms? Does freezing or starving to death constitute a harm that renders an agreement involuntary? How about becoming stateless, ejected from the protection of a society? Is it harm to lose some portion of the mutual benefit of an agreement because of a change in bargaining power. No one is self-sufficient; we all need to rely on others for our physical survival. Does our mutual dependence entail at least some obligation on the part of others to assist the survival of others? Again, these are not rational but political questions.

Third, how do we resolve disagreements between parties to an agreement about what a particular agreement actually means? What, precisely, have the parties agreed to? What do we do about these disputes? Again, how to interpret an agreement is as much a matter of not rationality but politics.

It's not enough to lay out just a consistent set of answers to these questions, because there are a very large number (perhaps infinite) number of consistent answer sets. Why should I prefer your set of answers to another?

One problem (out of many) with not only Libertarianism (right-anarchists) but also left-anarchism is that anarchists simply push all the interesting political questions to "voluntary agreements" and assume all these problematic questions are thereby solved at a stroke. I think this position is at best naive, and at worst dishonest.

Interview with a libertarian

In "Journey into a Libertarian Future," Andrew Dittmer Interviews radical libertarian "Code Name Cain", who quotes liberally from Hans-Hermann Hoppe's book, Democracy: The God that Failed.

Part I –The Vision
Part II – The Strategy
Part III – Regulation
Part IV – The Journey into a Libertarian Past
Part V – Dark Realities
Part VI – Certainty
Response to Reader Comments

David Graeber (and Daniel Little) on Anarchism

In David Graeber on the anarchist movement, Daniel Little reviews Graeber's book, Direct Action.

We want to see a world that is genuinely committed to some basic principles of social justice, equality, and personal freedom. And we generally acknowledge the point that the modern world can only function on the basis of social, political, and economic structures that have a degree of authority over individual conduct. These two framing ideas are in tension. ... Is social democracy actually a feasible outcome in the conditions of the 21st century?

There is a strand of radical thought that answers these questions in the negative. The "autonomist" theories and practices within the labor movement of the 1950s... represent one thread in this world. Another is the body of thinking, rhetoric, and action that is involved in the anarchist organizations associated with current anti-globalization activism. David Graeber has done an important service to the rest of us by offering an extended ethnography of this loosely connected movement in Direct Action. The book is the first I've seen to offer a nuanced description of the thinking, practices, and networks that have emerged within this movement over the past fifteen years or so.

Activism is important for correcting specific errors or problems, but according to Little,

it doesn't give a basis for creating institutions and structures that really work from the point of view of social justice and participatory democracy. ... In the end, I am more attracted to the kind of work begun by Fung and Wright, which is aimed at creating sustainable institutions of participatory democracy.

Questions about libertarian socialism

Reader Sunflame asks my opinion about the Wikipedia article on Libertarian Socialism. It's a long article, and will probably require following a few levels of links, so I'll have to give the article a close reading and careful analysis before I can respond in depth. A superficial reading, however, reveals a few questions.

I'm all for socialism, so the issue turns specifically on the libertarian component of the definition. It seems (again, at first glance) that libertarianism here means fundamentally that there should be no state. Now, when I hear "state", I interpret it to mean, "the sovereign organization which holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within a well-defined territory." A broader sense of state would remove the "within a well-defined territory" condition. It is important to understand that this definition of "state" does not talk about how the organization is constituted.

Is this the sense of "state" that anarchists mean, and if so, in which sense, the narrower the broader? Are we talking about whether there should be a state in this sense, or about how to constitute a state?

The "democracies" of today's world are all republics: In a "true" democracy, the people rule; in a republic, the people choose their rulers. Does libertarianism advocate for a truly democratic state: an organization with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence which operates in some truly democratic manner?

I hesitate to call myself an "anarchist" for the same reasons I prefer not to call myself a "socialist" (even "communist" suffers from the same flaws; I choose "communism" as the least bad option.) Regardless, I am all in favor of true democracy, and I want to figure out how to implement truly democratic political systems in the real world. Is all that stands between me and the anarchists merely a label of self-identification?

Evolution and economics

Allen Small compares evolution and economics. (Allen at least denies Creationism and Intelligent Design; congratulations, Allen: that's two fewer stupid ideas, a 100% increase.) But Allen makes the same mistake that Christian deniers of evolution make. Evolution is not a normative judgment; it is a scientific theory. In other words, evolution is neither good nor bad; it is true. Whether you like it or not — and I really don't like evolution — evolution has happened, is happening now, and will continue to happen. So saying that Austrian economics is good because it somehow promotes evolution is nonsensical.

Governments, police and all the apparatus of "states" have themselves evolved. We have let evolution take its course — what choice do we have? — the modern world is what has resulted. The federal government of the United States, the Federal Reserve Bank, the European Union, are are products of social, political and economic evolution. It's nonsensical for Allen to object to our current system by endorsing the basis of its actual origin.

I really dislike evolution. The whole process is wasteful, inefficient, entails massive suffering. Evolution is morally abhorrent. I don't believe evolution happens because I like it; quite the contrary: I believe it in spite of my preferences. I believe evolution happens because the scientific evidence is crystal-clear. If I could wave my magic wand and make biological evolution just go away, even without a good alternative, I would do so. (Greg Egan makes a strong moral case against evolution in his story, Crystal Nights, available online.) Saying that some process is good because it mimics evolution is in my eyes saying that some process is good because it mimics cancer or the plague (both of which have, of course, evolved).

The only reason I can accept evolution calmly is that it's a feature of an unthinking, uncaring universe. But humans in society are not unthinking, we are not — with the possible exception of Allen and those like him — uncaring. We must accept evolution because its true, and we must take into account when making decisions that we have and will evolve, but just that it is true doesn't make it good. We cannot decide that the unfit will survive, but we can — through medical science, for example — change what "unfit" actually means.

Political economy, like medical ethics and environmental science, lives at the intersection of normativity and truth, and we have to be very careful at that intersection. People are tempted to let their preferences about what is good influence their beliefs about what is true. And any serious, scientifically minded student of economics sees those on both the left and right routinely succumbing to that temptation. Allen is no exception. He has a vision of what he wants, and he lets his notions about what he wants influence what he believes is true. He wants a dog-eat-dog, every man for himself society, so he cons himself into believing that such a society will — despite all the evidence to the contrary — deliver social benefits it cannot possibly deliver.

There are ineluctable truths of economics, truths that we must take into account when making our decisions. But those truths are true no matter what decisions we make; we cannot decide to make them more or less true. One of those truths is that political economies will evolve (by mechanisms similar in spirit but very different in detail from biological evolution), no matter what decisions we make. We cannot decide to not let our political economies evolve. So again, saying that Austrian economics is somehow "better" because its more "evolutionary" is nonsensical. Allen might as well be saying that we should remove guard rails on balconies because letting people fall to their deaths is more in line with the law of gravity. Putting up or taking down guard rails does not affect the law of gravity in any sense.

The normative component of political economy is a matter of what we want. I call myself a communist — and I have explained at length the kind communist I call myself — because that's what I want. Libertarians are no different, except that they talk about what they want in the language of truth. But it's about what they want. Allen can't coherently want more evolution; we have evolution whether we want it or not. Allen is probably deluding himself (he's not a particularly intelligent guy), but given social evolution as a truth, if he were coherent he would want to make specific kinds of decisions in the world.

And what decisions would he make? No collective action, except to protect his own personal privilege, or the privilege he imagines he would have were he freed from social obligations to his fellow human beings. (One really ironic feature of Libertarianism is that some of its most vocal adherents, the lower levels of the professional-managerial middle class, would be second in line to get really fucked over by the people whose power and privilege a Libertarian system would really protect. But religions have been preying on the stupid and credulous for centuries, and gaining vocal support from those they oppress.) I reject that desire: I want us to act collectively for our mutual well-being. If Allen and those like him get all butthurt that they have to pay some taxes to live in a moderately prosperous, safe and smoothly-functioning society — a society that evolved — well, I can live with that.

The initiation of violence

Commenter Rod tries to define "voluntary cooperation":

A society of voluntary cooperation means that there is no legal initiation of violence. There is however legal violence when a criminal initiates violence against someone's person or property, and by doing so forfeits his own right not to be violated.

Voluntary cooperation does not mean that violations of person and property will be absent or should go unpunished by a legal system. When a criminal initiates violence, the victim has the right to use violence for restitution and punishment.

I would definitely agree with Rod in that there are uses of violence I consider in some sense "legitimate", and others I consider in some sense "illegitimate". The problem with Rod's definition is it that includes property, and the interesting controversy is not about the initiation of violence, but rather about precisely what constitutes property.

Furthermore, if we take the literal meaning of the "initiation of violence" as "the first use or threat of physical force against a person" (few would constitute the use of physical force against a nonsentient object as a violation of that objects own rights; the use of force against "property" is a violation of the sentient owner's rights) then the acquisition of property entails the initiation of violence: I must be the first to use physical force against a person who attempts to expropriate or infringe on the use of my nonsentient property. To escape the conundrum, the Libertarian must define the "initiation of violence" as something other than the plain meaning of the phrase: It must mean the use of force in ways the Libertarian considers illegitimate. But that's the fundamental definition of every form of government: a type of government is defined by its distinction between the uses of violence considered legitimate and illegitimate. We have to wonder why Rod is trying to bullshit us by using an English phrase with an unambiguous and uncontroversial literal meaning to represent the abstract, non-defining case.

("Radical" Libertarianism, which does not include property, is coherent and has, as Eric Frank Russell describes, considerable appeal. It might or might not be viable or evolutionarily stable.)

There are only four definitions of "property". The first is the recognition of ownership by mutual consent. If, for example, I find your wallet on the street, I'm going to give it back to you because I do in fact agree that the wallet is your property. But if property is established by mutual consent, theft is logically impossible. If I actually do agree that some object is yours, why would I take it? Contrawise, if I take some object, by definition I do not agree that it is in fact yours. So on this definition there can be no "violence" against property rights; where violence exists, there is by definition no mutual agreement to establish property.

The second definition is "the objects a person can physically protect," i.e. those objects a person can successfully initiate actual violence to maintain possession or ownership of. This "might makes right" definition seems so obviously contradictory to Rod's formulation that we cannot attribute it to Libertarians, at least not the garden-variety sort.

The third definition is "the objects over which a person has ownership by virtue of a social process." This definition overcomes the problems of property by mutual consent and avoids the "might makes right" implications of the second definition. But the problem is that almost all modern societies, including our own, implement this definition of "property". (All societies everywhere throughout history implement this definition of property, if you include passive compliance with a king or other authoritarian regime as a "social process".) And if ownership can be granted by virtue of a social process, it can equally be taken away by that process. When the government taxes you, it is taking away ownership by the same means it granted it to you in the first place; it is inconsistent on this definition to assent to one and object to the other.

The fourth definition is "the objects over which a person has ownership by virtue of some natural right." This seems like the definition that most Libertarians would prefer to use. The problem with this definition is that any conception of "natural" rights are at least as complicated as any body of legislation. More importantly, there is no objective means to settle disputes over natural rights in the same sense that there is an objective means to settle scientific disputes. Trying to establish some basis for natural rights just moves the problem around: Why choose a basis that establishes a "natural" right to some object for one person over another that establishes a "natural" right for another person?

I'm in favor of the third option: property is ownership established by a social process. The question then becomes not about property per se or the initiation of violence, but what sort of social process we want, and what we want it to do or not do. If any Libertarian agrees with the third definition and would like to describe a social process that grants a "Libertarian" definition of ownership, I'm all ears, and I'll evaluate that candidate social process on the basis of whether it is in my own interests. If any Libertarian agrees with the fourth definition, and can give a coherent account of "natural" property rights that is at least as rigorously provable as scientific claims about natural law, I'm equally receptive.

Voluntary cooperation

One of the biggest problems of both left- and right-anarchism is that the notion of "voluntary cooperation" is extremely philosophically problematic.

Now, I definitely want to act cooperatively, i.e. I don't want to steal from people. I don't want to hurt or kill other people. I don't want to endanger other people. I don't want to have non-consensual sex with other people. I don't want to exploit or take advantage of other people. I don't want to enslave or otherwise subordinate other people. That's just how I roll. But what does it mean to say I want to refrain from these activities, i.e. that I don't want to do these things?

Let's take a more scientific approach and consider an operational definition of "wanting". If I were given an externally unconstrained choice between two societies, one of which (for whatever reason) theft, assault, murder, rape, exploitation, and slavery were rare, and another where these activities were common, I would choose the former, the society where they were rare. But that definition doesn't tell you anything about my wants or desires, it just tells you that I'm rational: By any reasonable metric, I will be materially and physically better off in a society where theft, etc. were rare... even if subjectively I were to have no particular desire to act cooperatively. So framing "want" in this sense doesn't help much.

Let's try a slightly different frame, again a choice between two different societies, both of which are about equally cooperative. In the first, people act cooperatively (i.e. they don't steal, etc.), but there are no physical or violent constraints: that's just how the individuals in that society happen to roll. On the rare occasion where someone does steal stuff, or assault someone, etc., they just shake their heads and say, "How regrettable." In the second, people act cooperatively, but there are physical and/or violent constraints on uncooperative behavior. (I'm of course excluding the middle of a society with nonviolent constrained to cooperate; more on this in a minute.) Superficially, I would prefer to join the former society and act cooperatively; they sound like genuinely nice people. Because of the violent constraints on cooperation, I really don't know anything about the character of individuals in the second society. The problem, though, is that there are a lot of assholes who would see the first society as ripe for exploitation: They would join the first society just so they could steal, assault, murder, rape, and enslave its members... including me. (What if there were no assholes? Again, more on this.)

But there's a substantial problems with the second society too: I really can't be sure the physical, violent constraints on cooperative behavior won't be employed "uncooperatively"; I don't know that the government (the institutions that physically enforce cooperation) won't turn into a "state" (according to Lenin's definition) to implement the oppression of one class by another.

What we have here is the Prisoner's Dilemma. It's "obvious" that everyone is better off if everyone cooperates than if no one cooperates. But it's equally "obvious" that if everyone else cooperates, an individual (with no external constraints on his behavior) is even better of if he himself does not cooperate: He gains the benefits of everyone else cooperating, but avoids the costs of his own cooperation. It's a perplexing conundrum; the problem itself is obvious but the answers are most definitely not obvious.

Let's look at some of the possibilities I glossed over earlier.

What if there were only "nonviolent" constraints on cooperation? Suppose, for example, that a person who stole, assaulted people, etc. were somehow shunned, ostracized, or something like that. The society would have to be absolutely nonviolent; if you can allow someone to starve or freeze to death for any reason, you might as well just shoot them. And even "minimally" violent constraints do not escape the philosophical problem: Omelas and The Country of the Kind both employ violence to preserve social cooperation. I'm all for efficiency, but using as little violence as possible is a horse of a very different color from refusing on principle to use any violence at all.

But if there are really only nonviolent constraints on cooperation (assuming there are those who must be constrained, see the next paragraph on "no assholes"), then what's to prevent the people "nonviolently" constrained from banding together to act as an exploiting class, to gain from each other the benefits denied by the rest of society? That's been the behavior of every ruling class in history: They really don't care that the hoi polloi hold them in contempt or refuse to socialize with them, so long as they obey. And they have always found soldiers and police willing to do the dirty work of maintaining obedience.

What if there were no assholes (or few enough that they could not band together to form an alternative society)? That's the most promising possibility; assholes are definitely not logically necessary, and I can imagine circumstances where assholes were as physically impossible as a human being born with working tentacles instead of arms and legs. Indeed, if such a society were to exist, I would join it... if they would let me in. The problem is that I have absolutely no idea how to arrange circumstances such that assholes really were physically impossible, except by the painfully slow evolutionary process of violently selecting out the most egregious assholes. We might get there in a thousand years, or ten thousand, or maybe even a million. (Why not? We have at least a few billion years to play with.) And when we do, good for us.

But as desirable as conditions might be that made assholes physically impossible, I don't see any practical way of arranging such conditions today or tomorrow. However technically correct one might be, I don't see much point complaining that we have a violent society, a lot of assholes, and (correctly) denouncing any attempt to contain them as perpetuating the violence of modern society. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and a project of a thousand generations begins with the work of a single lifetime. I may not be able to achieve anything within shouting distance of perfection within my lifetime, but I would like to at least get a step closer.

Leftist science fiction

Mack Reynolds. Reynolds' novels feature "hyper-industrialism", where most of the necessities of life are provided by highly automated factories and most people do not perform productive labor (they're supported monetarily by the Negative Income Tax). He also features a professional-managerial "meritocratic" ruling class. Sadly, most of his work is out of print, but it can still be found in used bookstores.

Notable works (that I've read) include Commune 2000 A.D. (1974) and The Towers of Utopia (1975).

The works of Greg Egan. Many of Egan's works — especially Diaspora (1997); Schild's Ladder (2002), and Incandescence (2008) — describe a post-industrial "virtual" society, where consciousness is implemented both biologically and electronically. Productive activity is entirely voluntary and ethical beliefs have widespread agreement and near-uniform compliance. Although perhaps Utopian, these works are probably the best fictional description of a classless society. He also discusses a more contemporary vision of a politically isolated left-anarchist society in Distress (1995). He seems extremely liberal/progressive, atheistic and not particularly religion-friendly (see especially his novellas Oceanic and The Moral Virologist). In addition to political philosophy, his novels and short stories explore subtle philosophical issues of ontology, epistemology and ethics.

Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, especially the original series, is often considered socialist, depicting a society without money. Later series use the often slightly ridiculous alien Ferenghi to poke fun at modern capitalism.

If anyone has any suggestions, please offer them here in comments. I think science/speculative fiction is an excellent medium for discussing and exploring political philosophy and philosophy in general.

Update: China Miéville's Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read (thanks to a commenter)

The 24 types of Libertarian

(click thumbnail for larger image)

Note: I've heard that leftycartoons has some malware scripts. The original source for the image is here, but don't click the link unless your shields are up.

(via PZ Myers)

These types map pretty directly, some identically, to left-anarchists as well.

A Libertarian theorist

Q: What do you get when you cross a fundamentalist Christian with a Nazi?

A: A Libertarian

Libertarians are of course neither fundamentalist Christians (most profess atheism) nor Nazis (few wear toothbrush mustaches). But there's a similarity in spirit. The similarity to fundamentalist Christianity comes in the reliance on scripture "theory":

By theory I mean a proposition whose validity does not depend on further experience but can be established a priori. This is not to say that one can do without experience altogether in establishing a theoretical proposition. However, it is to say that even if experience is necessary, theoretical insights extend and transcend logically beyond a particular historical experience. Theoretical propositions are about necessary facts and relations and, by implication, about impossibilities. Experience may thus illustrate a theory. But historical experience can neither establish a theorem nor refute it. [emphasis original]

As to the similarity with Nazis, well...

[A] natural order is characterized by increased discrimination, segregation, spatial separation, uniculturalism (cultural homogeneity), exclusivity, and exclusion. In addition, whereas states have undermined intermediating social institutions (family households, churches, covenants, communities, and clubs) and the associated ranks and layers of authority so as to increase their own power vis-a-vis equal and isolated individuals, a natural order is distinctly un-egalitarian: "elitist," "hierarchical," "proprietarian," "patriarchical," and "authoritorian," and its stability depends essentially on the existence of a self-conscious natural – voluntarily acknowledged – aristocracy.

Seig Heil!

(And the difference between a right anarchist and a left anarchist is that a right anarchist is sincere and up-front; a left anarchist (at least one with a triple-digit IQ*) will pretend to be sad when he's enslaving or killing you.)

*It's possible that db0 is literally** a bird-brain.
**Irony: Learn it. Use it. Make it your friend.

(via Brad DeLong)

Voluntary cooperation

One theme in political philosophy is the conflict between authoritarianism and anti-authoritarianism, or, for want of a better word, liberalism. This conflict is still active: there is today a non-trivial subset of society that are authoritarian submissives, and those who will step up to command them.

Authoritarianism is a specific thing, briefly the idea that submission to the will of another is an intrinsic good and any independence and autonomy in conflict with the commands of an authority an intrinsic evil. But opposition to authoritarianism is not a specific thing. Any compromise of the absolute, unconditional nature of authority constitutes anti-authoritarianism, from the absolute opposition to anyone ever conforming herself to the will of another under any circumstances to merely the idea that a subject has at least the right to protest an order, even if she is ultimately forced to comply over her objections.

Anti-authoritarianism has been around at least since the beginning of the 18th century, and arguably goes back to ancient Greece. In the West, anti-authoritarianism has, in one form or another, been the predominant political philosophy since the late 18th and early 19th centuries bourgeois revolutions, and goes by the general label of "liberalism". Just because an general component of political philosophy is predominant doesn't mean it's unchallenged. That the 20th and early 21st century "conservative" revolutions in the West are indeed seen as radical revolutions seeking to overturn the liberal status quo is by itself strong evidence for the present predominance of liberalism.

Denying the underlying narrative of authoritarianism — that authority must be obeyed just because it is an authority — demands a counter-narrative. should one person ever subordinate her immediate will — even a little — to the will of one or many others? And if so, when, under what circumstances, and to what degree?

At least under present circumstances, we have to say that yes indeed, sometimes an individual must subordinate his will to the will of others. This view is not authoritarian, because it denies that a person must always, unconditionally submit: sometimes is not always. We are forced by physical necessity to cooperate; there are benefits we must have to survive that can be gained only by working for a mutual goal. Furthermore, we know there are situations such that:

• If everyone in a group cooperates, everyone is better off than if no one cooperates
• If everyone else cooperates, any individual is always better off if he does not individually cooperate

In other words, there are situations where mutual cooperation itself creates a "benefit" of being a "free rider".

One good way of managing this situation is creating the ideal of voluntary cooperation. Voluntary cooperation consists of the following premises:

1. An individual can join any group with the consent of its existing members
   
2. By joining a group, an individual agrees to cooperate for the mutual benefit of the members of the group. By implication, a person will join a group if and only if she believes that cooperation will be more beneficial than independence or membership in any other group
   
3. If an individual does not believe that cooperating within the group is in her best interest, she may leave at any time, taking her share of the physical assets of the group with her.
   
4. If the rest of the members of a group do not believe that a specific member is cooperating, they may expel that member from the group. (Technically, the rest of the members can leave the original group and form a new group without the offending members.)

It seems clear that voluntary cooperation will "naturally" maximize not just the "selfish" but also the mutual benefit of a large group of individuals, without specifying at all what those mutual benefits happen to be. The maximization of mutual benefit emerges from the structure of the system rather than from any particular definition of what constitutes benefit. It also seems clear that voluntary association is arbitrarily meta-recursive: Groups can join or leave super-groups, super-groups can join and leave super-duper-groups, ad infinitum.

However, actual voluntary cooperation is not presently achievable.* The rub is (3). Obviously, if an individual were forcibly constrained to be in a group, we could not call it voluntary cooperation; an individual in a group could be exploited rather being guaranteed to enjoy the mutual benefits of group cooperation. But also, if it's not possible for an individual to survive and prosper individually, (3) is, in principle, equally compromised. It's even more compromised if there are a limited number of groups, and especially if there are significant costs of forming and/or joining a group.

*I'm not saying (at least not yet) that any group actually believes or proposes that actual voluntary cooperation is or is not achievable.

It's not at all clear that actual voluntary cooperation would ever be achievable. Regardless of group participation, it's still physically possible for individuals in a group to physically coerce individuals in other groups. It's not at all clear that equality of coercive force between groups would emerge from the principles of voluntary cooperation. Indeed it seems clear using perturbation theory that inequality of force would emerge. Suppose one group had a slight advantage of coercive force over another. The first group could then recruit new members by offering the mutual benefit of coercively exploiting the second. To the extent that the size of a group offered it a coercive advantage, a small disequilibrium would have a positive feedback effect magnifying rather than dampening the disequilibrium.

Actual voluntary cooperation might also not be economically possible under any circumstances. Presently, an individual cannot even survive completely on his own; membership in some group is absolutely compelled by physical necessity. But even if individual survival were possible, it is not at all certain that living a "good" life would ever be possible as an individual. It might well be the case that people would always define a "good" life as enjoying benefits available only by cooperation. Even if every person actually had a Mr. Fusion and a replicator, it might be that interplanetary or interstellar travel was considered necessary to live a full and complete life. In much the same sense, even today we define a good and dignified life as not just having enough to eat and sufficient shelter to survive a snowstorm, but having a clean and comfortable dwelling, healthy and nutritious food, access to not just life-saving but also life-enhancing medical and dental care, access to communications and media, and other benefits over and above sheer survival.

But it's not at all necessary that voluntary cooperation be actually achievable to be a useful idea. Even though for example Newtonian mechanics is an enormously useful idea for modeling the behavior of physical objects on the surface of the Earth, even though in practice air resistance and gravity make ideal behavior actually impossible. In much the same sense, we can use voluntary cooperation as a theoretical ideal to measure the quality of an actual social system: We can define a system to be good to the extent that it creates an outcome similar to the outcome we would predict from actual voluntary cooperation. The abstract ideal of voluntary cooperation gives us an objective measurement of the quality of a social system. (Note that having an objective measurement does not compromise meta-ethical subjective relativism: we are still making an arbitrary decision to privilege voluntary cooperation as our standard of measure.)

All "liberal" political philosophies explicitly or implicitly reference the abstract ideal of voluntary cooperation as the standard of measure of the quality of an actual social structure. Even crypto-authoritarians must at least be crypto- and give lip service to voluntary cooperation as a standard of measure. All arguments over political philosophy consist of either what benefits would result from the abstract ideal of voluntary cooperation or to what degree the benefits of some existing or proposed social structure would actually match the theoretical benefits of voluntary cooperation. Even its proponents of capitalism assert that bourgeois democracy best matches the benefits of voluntary cooperation under present physical circumstances. But note that any social system that is not actually voluntary cooperation is not actually voluntary cooperation; at best it is something other than actual voluntary cooperation that more or less resembles voluntary cooperation. We can at best say that a social system implements effective rather than actual voluntary cooperation.

Anarchists are not at all explicit about what objectively constitutes "institutional" or "hierarchical" authority. Merely saying that the authority of expertise does not constitute hierarchical authority is insufficient. It's also somewhat misleading: one can use expertise to exercise actual power over others. Physicians, for example, are presently using (or allowing others, — insurance companies — to use) their expertise for truly staggering economic exploitation.

There are two ways, then, to infer a meaning of "hierarchical" or "institutional" authority to which anarchists object. The first is any coercion or necessity that causes the outcome of a system to deviate substantially from the abstract ideal of voluntary cooperation. There's nothing "wrong" with this definition; the only problem is that it doesn't at all differentiate anarchism from liberalism in general.

The alternative reading is that hierarchical or institutional authority is any coercion that deviates from actual voluntary cooperation. This reading is more problematic.

One way to achieve effective voluntary cooperation is to privilege some individuals with the power to make sure that other individuals do not actually behave contrary to the principles of actual voluntary cooperation. For example, we privilege police, courts and prisons to ensure (at least in theory) that rapists and murderers do not "infiltrate" the group of non-raping, non-murdering people. We do so by technically violating the principles of actual voluntary cooperation by forcing rapists and murderers to join the prison population group. While we are (in theory) violating the principle of actual voluntary cooperation, the results of this violation implements effective voluntary cooperation: the outcome of a system where we violently coerce rapists and murderers resembles a system where the group of non-raping non-murdering people could effectively exclude a rapist or murderer.

Anarchists make (as best I can discern) a not-at-all stupid argument that privileging people in this way cannot result in effective voluntary cooperation. Privileging some individuals to maintain effective voluntary cooperation will result instead in that group coercing others for their own exploitative benefit. I'm not at all confident that this argument is false or unsound. But what's the alternative?

The only alternative I can see is that the social ideas prevalent in the population are such that effective voluntary cooperation occurs without any individuals being privileged, even putatively to coercively maintain effective voluntary cooperation. The problem comes in how to make these social ideas prevalent in the population, and how to keep them prevalent.

Exhortation and positive propaganda, i.e. trying to convince a lot of people of the value of these social ideas, does not seem sufficient. Again, we can use perturbation theory to criticize this method. Suppose almost everyone really did have all the social ideas necessary to effect voluntary cooperation. But suppose that a few people did not have these ideas. Because our society ex hypothesi effects voluntary cooperation, these few people can freely — without violent coercion or coercion by necessity — leave the group of people with the "right" sort of social ideas and create a group with the "wrong" sort of social ideas. Suppose these "wrong" ideas included the ideas of within-group cooperation, but rejected the idea of inter-group noninterference: they work together as a group, but think that it's OK to coerce other groups. Voluntary cooperation does entail any "natural" or systematic way this group would not grow arbitrarily large, large enough to actually benefit from inter-group coercion, a relative benefit not availed by other groups.

Note that this argument is not the naturalistic fallacy, which is the fallacious conclusion that because some state of affairs actually exists, it is therefore preferable. This is an argument from "human nature", but it's an argument from a deep character of human nature: our ability to form novel social ideas. It is not an argument that the present state of human social ideas constitutes an ineluctable, physically necessary condition.

It's also not a slam-dunk argument proving that the second reading of anarchism is definitely impossible. We simply do not know what's possible and impossible; we only know what is or is not probable or plausible given definite initial circumstances. It may be the case that some set of social ideas, and perhaps some method of how human beings transmit and select against social ideas, would effect voluntary cooperation without either privileged coercion and by somehow "naturally" dampening dissent from shared social ideas.

But "Anything's possible," is not by itself a very persuasive argument. If the anarchists (of the second reading) ever figure out how — even in theory — to implement a society that can effect voluntary cooperation without somehow privileging someone to maintain cooperative behavior, I'm all ears. But until then, I'm going to focus my energy on not eliminating but improving social institutions and authority structures to better serve the needs and mutual benefit of all humanity.

Is anarchism just anti-authoritarianism?

In my previous post on Why are anarchists against authority and hierarchy? I drew the conclusion that anarchism opposes any "artificially" concentrated power, i.e. power concentrated other than by the immediate, intentional will of the participants. But there's an alternative reading: that anarchism represents the much broader position of anti-authoritarianism.

We are fortunate that the brilliant Dr. Altemeyer has given us a detailed, precise and scientific description of authoritarianism, which I can briefly summarize as submission and obedience to another's will as an intrinsic good, it it good in and of itself. If obedience is an intrinsic good, then it is also unconditional: an authoritarian submissive will fail to obey only because of the imperfections and exigencies of the real world.

The FAQ quotes Bakunin saying that authority entails that "the masses... must submit at all times." The FAQ goes on to distinguish absolute from participatory power:

[I]n any group undertaking there is a need [to] make and stick by agreements... [but] there are two [fundamentally] different ways of co-ordinating individual activity within groups -- either by authoritarian means or by libertarian means. Proudhon, in relation to workplaces, makes the difference clear:

either the workman. . . will be simply the employee of the proprietor-capitalist-promoter; or he will participate. . . [and] have a voice in the council, in a word he will become an associate.

Proudhon is clearly distinguishing absolute authority from participatory decision making.

This reading, however, poses problems. First, it would make anarchism if not actually trivial then at least commonplace. There are admittedly a lot of real, hard-core authoritarians in the world, even in the West, but authoritarianism is still a minority philosophy. Even garden-variety capitalist democracy has many participatory features; under normal circumstances even low-wage workers are not chattel slaves. If most everyone were an anarchist (and even authoritarians have to at least give lip service to participation), then anarchism wouldn't mean very much; it would be the Mom and apple pie of the left.

More telling, though, is that this distinction is trivially easy to denote in common English. There's simply no reason to bring terms like "hierarchy" and "institution", which the article uses without explicit definition and with implications subtly or obviously different from ordinary usage (indeed the author seems to use "hierarchy" to label a laundry list of evils with little in common other than his or her dislike.) When someone uses complicated terminology to label a simple idea, you should smell a rhetorical rat.

The author gives us a garden-variety fallacy of differentiation:

Of course, it will be pointed out that in any collective undertaking there is a need for co-operation and co-ordination and this need to "subordinate" the individual to group activities is a form of authority. Therefore, it is claimed, a democratically managed group is just as "authoritarian" as one based on hierarchical authority. Anarchists are not impressed by such arguments. Yes, we reply, of course in any group undertaking there is a need make and stick by agreements but anarchists argue that to use the word "authority" to describe two fundamentally different ways of making decisions is playing with words. It obscures the fundamental difference between free association and hierarchical imposition and confuses co-operation with command (as we note in section H.4, Marxists are particularly fond of this fallacy). Simply put, there are two different ways of co-ordinating individual activity within groups -- either by authoritarian means or by libertarian means.

The fallacy of differentiation consists of concluding that because there is some difference between two things, the two things have nothing in common. "Free association" is participatory; "hierarchical imposition" is absolute, therefore there is nothing in common between the two.

The quoted passage is riddled with fallacies. First, the author puts the mirror fallacy of identification* in critics' mouths: democratic organization has something in common with "hierarchical authority", therefore they are both just as (i.e. identically) "authoritarian". Indeed, the cited section** does not assert that critics even make this argument, much less rebut it. Second, the author employs the fallacy fallacy: a counter-argument faulty on its merits does not support the original position. Third, the author blatantly switches horses in mid-stream, moving from "democratic association" to "free association".

*Two things have something in common, therefore they are identical
**Indeed that section is also rife with fallacy.

These collections of fallacies are common in persuasive rhetoric and propaganda. The tactic is to first to draw the reader's attention to some obvious absurdity or evil (e.g. absolute, unconditional authority), then to state one's admirable in opposition to the obvious absurdity. The twist then comes by subtly or obviously labeling anyone who disagrees with your own particular form of opposition as therefore supporting the obvious absurdity.

The more I read the FAQ, the more I'm convinced that anarchists are self-deluded bullshit artists with lack of intelligence, integrity, honesty and morals that would shame a Christian fundamentalist creationist.

Why are anarchists against authority and hierarchy? part 1

It's a bit subtle, and not trivial to pull out in a coherent way, but it appears that this section of the Anarchist FAQ, Why are anarchists against authority and hierarchy? entails that coercive power should never be concentrated "abstractly" or generally by social construction.

It's clear that the FAQ opposes any "artificially" concentrated power. The FAQ quotes Bakunin, "[W]e wish... to abolish artificial, privileged, legal, and official influences... [N]o one should be entrusted with power, inasmuch as anyone invested with authority must... became an oppressor and exploiter of society. [emphasis added]" Martha A. Ackelsberg adds, "[T]the exercise of power in any institutionalised form — whether economic, political or sexual — brutalises both the wielder of power and the one over whom it is exercised. [emphasis added]"

Instead, any concentration of coercive power should be by the specific, immediate intention of the people involved. Again, Bakunin states, "[W]e hardly wish to abolish the effect of any individual's or any group of individual's natural influence upon the masses. [emphasis added]" People should be "taking part in a decision and listening to alternative viewpoints and experts ("natural influence") before making [their minds] up."

We have an immediate problem, though. What can Bakunin mean by the contrast of "artificial" and "natural"? In ordinary English, this contrast denotes human-made and non-human-made. But of course all social constructions are human made, and therefore artificial. Clearly, he must mean something different: we must interpret "artificial" as concentrated generally by social construction (i.e. "believing in" laws, police, prisons, etc.) rather than concentrated by the direct, immediate will of the people involved.

In a trivial sense (a sense I of course do not believe is specifically intended by the authors) this definition is vacuous as a political philosophy. Every person is ineluctably in possession of coercive power, by virtue of his fists and feet and at least the potential of using weapons. We have laws, police, prisons, officials, etc. because people individually choose to "believe in" and comply with these institutions, rather than individually choose to concentrate their own coercive power and resist these institutions by force of arms. Indeed, the coercive power of these institutions is maintained by at least some individuals naturally deciding to concentrate their power by joining the police and the military.

Of course, the FAQ argues that because our individual opinions are shaped by societal institutions, institutions that have "wrongly" concentrated coercive power, the decision to comply with or join these institutions is ipso facto artificial.

[T]he way people behave is more a product of the institutions in which we are raised than of any inherent nature. In other words, social relationships shape the individuals involved. This means that the various groups individuals create have traits, behaviours and outcomes that cannot be understood by reducing them to the individuals within them. That is, groups consist not only of individuals, but also relationships between individuals and these relationships will affect those subject to them.

But the FAQ understates the case. The way people specifically behave is completely a product of social institutions and constructions; all we get "naturally" are certain emotional propensities. In a social sense, we are nothing but the social constructions we learn and imitate from those around us. We don't even have language naturally; all we have naturally is a propensity to learn whatever language or languages predominate our childhood social environment.

The division into "natural" and "artificial" is not just metaphorical, it is actively misleading. It leads us to think about social constructions as being differentiable by those coming from "outside" and those already "inside". But (barring actual conquest, which is not at issue in this context) outside what? It cannot be outside our intrinsic individual nature, because nothing is intrinsic except a propensity to absorb extrinsic social constructions. It cannot be outside humanity, because everything is inside humanity. The FAQ makes the actual distinction between power concentrated by general social construction, rather than by the specific, immediate intention of the people involved. But this distinction is a good/bad distinction, not an inside/outside distinction.

Indeed, the misleading "inside/outside" distinction pervades this chapter of the FAQ. Bakunin says,

[A]uthority... [is the] eminently theological, metaphysical and political idea that the masses, always incapable of governing themselves, must submit at all times to the benevolent yoke of a wisdom and a justice, which in one way or another, is imposed from above. [emphasis original]

I share Bakunin's objections to a kind of authority, the kind of authority to which the masses must submit at all times, unconditionally. But the thesis of this chapter is that this sort of authority is bad because it is "artificial", because it comes from outside or "is imposed from above". But in reality this kind of authority becomes artificial and "outside" because those authorities insist on unconditional submission.

This inversion of causation is at the heart of many of the inconsistencies, ambiguities, paradoxes and vagueness of anarchism as a political philosophy.

Anarchism in action

This is what I'm talking about when I mention unreasoning hostility and intellectual dishonesty. He's frothing worse than Ken Ham looking at a fossil.

One swallow does not a summer make, but I don't think db0 is making anarchism look all that attractive.

He's sending a lot of readers to my blog, though, so it's not all bad.

Understanding anarchism

I frankly admit that I do not understand anarchism, either left (libertarian socialism) or right (big-ell Libertarianism). I've concluded that my failure to understand anarchism is because the philosophy is fundamentally incoherent: there is no "there" there. My attempts to understand anarchism philosophically have been met not with correction but with hostility and blatant intellectual dishonesty and bad faith, in a manner very similar to Christian responses to understanding Christianity. I draw the conclusion that vocal advocates of anarchism do not have any sort of deep understanding of their own philosophy. (A plausible alternative conclusion is that they do not care whether or not I understand anarchism. Because I'm not an adherent I am therefore an enemy. People of course do in fact freely choose their enemies. I have a lot of enemies; a few more anarchists doesn't bother me.)

Of course, I might be wrong — as I might be wrong about each and every belief I have — and my understanding of anarchism is always subject to revision based on new evidence and argument.

I do not understand what anarchists mean by "hierarchical authority" (or the related concept of Libertarian and right-anarchism of "initiation of coercion"). The best explanations I've read of these concepts boil down to the presence or exercise of authority or coercion the anarchist does not herself like. There's nothing at all wrong about disliking and condemning some particular exercise of authority or coercion. What I do not understand are the broad conclusions and anarchists seem to draw from the presence of objectionable authority and coercion and the principles they endorse in response to those conclusions. Purported explanations seem to rely on metaphor: anarchists, for example, don't want anyone to be "above" anyone else: in this case "above" is a metaphor; anarchists do not of course object to one person being taller than another.

I do not understand how is anarchism is different from capitalist democracy on the right and democratic communism (as opposed to Soviet or Chinese oligarchical communism) on the left. In their ideal forms, I don't understand the difference between left- and right-anarchism (libertarian socialism and Libertarianism/anarcho-capitalism) other than beliefs about people would actually behave under ideal circumstances; circumstances that differ so radically from present-day circumstances that I'm unable to grasp any evidentiary or scientific basis for their beliefs.

The closest I've come to a detailed and coherent account of anarchism is Systemantics, John Gall's witty and insightful examinations of how systems work and, more importantly, how they fail. The author concludes that systems are, by and large, not merely useless but counterproductive; we should simply do without systems wherever possible. Many of his principles conform to my own experience of building small- and large-scale systems; the principles that

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.

seem without exception, at least for certain definitions of "simple" and "complex".

On the other hand, the author presents very little evidence for his conclusions, and the evidence he does deign to present is cherry-picked, presented without context or detail, and his interpretation blatantly biased. For example, the author notes that the modern produce distribution system fails to deliver fresh, tree-ripened apples to the ordinary grocery store consumer, and concludes that the produce distribution system is therefore a failure.

More importantly, while the author describes at length the ridiculous pathologies of systems, he offers little in the way of explaining why systems pervade human society. His only explanation is there are some people, "systems-people", who are mean and bad and fat and dumb and have magically risen to positions of authority.

I'm obviously interpreting, but I see pervading all forms of anarchism the sense that those wielding the objectionable sorts of authority have magically gained this authority, almost as if they have landed in spaceships and enslaved humanity with superior technology. (Alternatively anarchists seem to reify authority from an abstract relationship between human beings to a concrete entity that can by itself be fought or eliminated.)

I do think that many of the systems actually in place — notably capitalism — are pathological and profoundly and deeply broken. And in conditions of massive oppression, exploitation and outright failure, I cannot condemn simply standing up and saying, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore," without offering a coherent alternative. I also understand and appreciate the value of people who are willing to oppose The System simply because it is The System, regardless of its particular characteristics. While I do not agree with Gall that systems are generally bad, with good systems rare and entirely accidental, I do think that any system that cannot tolerate and even encourage with good humor a certain amount "sand in the gears", i.e. opposition and resistance, is not a system suitable for human beings.

In other words, I'm not sure it's even important for me to understand anarchism. If anarchism labels an affinity group of people who simply want to oppose The System without worrying overmuch about the specifics, then good for them. Although it's not my personal affinity, anarchists in this sense must exist and to a certain extent thrive in any good system, especially a system of governance.

On the other hand, if anarchism really were, as many of its proponents suggest, a coherent, rational and practical political philosophy, then I do want to know about it and be rationally convinced.

What would an Anarchist society look like?

db0 asks What would an Anarchist society look like?

I'm curious as to my readers' thoughts on this article. The acrimony and personal hostility between him and me is simply too great for anyone to reasonably trust my analysis to be sufficiently unbiased.

A misanthropic anarchist

Commenter Mr Aversion recently emailed me, and I want to give special attention to his prefatory remarks, reprinted here with permission and with only minor corrections to obvious typographical errors:

I don't think I am the sort of anarchist apologist that you perhaps expect. I realize that there are tremendous, possibly insurmountable, obstacles preventing the successful implementation of the 'ideal' anarchist social structures (even assuming there is agreement on the broad outline of what that means). I am really more of a misanthropic anarchist: I don't really care whether other people are capable of living the way I think people should live; I only care that I am capable of doing so. The social problems of others don't interest me, much, except in the abstract. If other people are too stupid, or too nasty, to cooperate peacefully, that's really their problem, not mine. It only becomes my problem when I am confronted directly by coercion. And when that happens I either kick back or I don't, the decision being predicated on the material, physical consequences of either course of action. However, if I don't kick back, that doesn't mean I approve of or willingly comply with the actions of my enemies. It means, precisely, that I have been coerced.

In one sense, this is the only logically physically possible response of any person to coercion: you either comply or resist. It's an important scientific position though, because it correctly denies the Altemeyer authoritarian submissive belief that some socially-constructed authorities must be obeyed just and only because they possess socially-constructed authority.

In another sense, Mr Aversion alludes to a moral and ethical position of some importance, again denying an implicit ethical position of authoritarian submissives: it is wrong and bad to delegate your moral authority to another, to accept another person's opinion uncritically as to what is good or bad. It is at least debatable whether it's wise or good to delegate enforcement, but I share Mr Aversion's condemnation of delegating or pretending to delegate one's moral authority and judgment.

(In other words, it seems wise on one hand to morally judge others on the totality of their circumstances; we might in some cases judge that some circumstances, such as the presence of coercion, mitigates or excuses some action that we would judge more negatively absent those circumstances. On the other hand, I do not approve that any circumstances, even the presence of coercion, would exempt a person from judgment.)

He goes on:

I consider paying taxes, for instance, to be an involuntary act forced on me at gunpoint by hoodlums; functionally and morally equivalent to a protection racket. I believe this and I say this openly to the receiver of revenue, but I comply because the alternative is worse. My act of compliance does not invalidate my opposition to the principle.

(Mr Aversion is not strictly coerced into paying taxes, or at least not if he were an American citizen. If you restrict yourself to a fairly low income, you can avail yourself of most socially provided services without paying income tax. (I would find it hypocritical that anyone would assert a "natural" or inalienable right to have an arbitrary level of income in a socially constructed economy.) If you buy only certain items, such as food, you can eliminate sales taxes or minimize them to triviality. True, if you have any income at all, you must pay Social Security and Medicare taxes. It's humanly intolerable*, however, that we let any old person starve or deny him or her basic medical care under any circumstances. Therefore each person has a concomitant obligation to contribute to his own and others retirement.)

*If you disagree, I'm just not interested in hearing from you.

I ask "so what?" in the sense that anyone who's actually coerced of course objects to what he's being coerced to do or not do. It's always possible to express that objection as "principled"; a moral position does not change character just because it's expressed as a principle. (The position that, "I might not agree with his principles, but I admire him because he has principles," is utter nonsense.) Essentially, we* don't care about your personal dissent; if we did care, we wouldn't coerce you in the first place. Approve or disapprove as you please, so long as you comply. That's what coercion is.

*Me and the mouse in my pocket.

I assume Mr Aversion intends the pejorative sense of "hoodlums" and "protection racket": he is explicitly making a moral judgment: something is not just of a particular character, but is bad and wrong. Assuming that we do care (in a philosophical sense) about his dissent and judgment, we have to examine what precisely it is he's judging and dissenting from.

There are three ways to interpret this statement. Mr Aversion might object just because taxation is coerced; the coercion itself establishes the status of tax collectors as "hoodlums" who are operation a "protection racket". Alternatively Mr Aversion might object because some other unspecified characteristic of tax collectors themselves establish them as "hoodlums". Or, finally, the specific character of taxation (or the specific uses to which its put) might establish tax collectors as hoodlums. None of these three interpretations, however, hold much water.

In the first interpretation, though, we would have to find that Mr Aversion universally condemns coercion. (Otherwise, he's just objecting that he himself is being coerced: so what?) But his other commentary clearly indicates that does not universally condemn coercion. So this interpretation is easily eliminated.

Even under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, there are substantive functional differences between taxation and a "protection racket"; I must charitably assume that Mr Aversion is simply being hyperbolic, and not rewriting the facts to suit his preferences. It's notable (and perhaps unintentionally ironic) that one of the fundamental reasons we pay taxes is precisely to pay for police, who do in fact and by design suppress actual protection rackets by actual hoodlums.

One substantive difference is that taxation is predominantly compulsory whereas most other uses (that Mr Aversion presumably approves of) are prohibitive. It's definitely a coherent (non-self-contradictory) ethical preference to disapprove of compulsory coercion in general and approve of some prohibitive coercion: the distinction, while sometimes fuzzy, is susceptible to objective determination.

But this distinction just moves the "so what?" to the meta-level. I pretty much know how Mr Aversion will vote, but since his position at least presently appears to be in the minority, he's doomed to be coerced unless and until he can persuade enough people to join him to at least create effective resistance. I personally do not object in principle or in general to compulsory coercion (I do, of course, object to some forms of compulsion on the basis of their specific character), and I derive more benefit from having a tax-supported society that I would by having that money for myself without the kind of society supported by taxation. Why do I want to change my vote?

Mr Aversion goes into considerably more detail in both his comments and the email, which I will examine and discuss in future posts.

On law, part 1

Commenter Mr Aversion argues against the benefits of law:

Irrespective of the existence of laws or governments, they do them. My contention is that people who intend to rape, murder, steal and so on, are undeterred by the existence of laws or governments. Laws and governments simply add a wholly redundant yet costly and complicated overlay without providing any value in this instance. My belief is that the vast majority of people will not ever commit these crimes, whether government exists or not; and those who will commit these crimes, will do so, whether government exists or not.

There's a definite, material claim here: Laws and governments are "wholly redundant": laws themselves do not effect beneficial changes in people's behavior. The apparent causal relationship between laws and beneficial changes in behavior is, presumably, that both laws and beneficial changes are the effects of a common cause. (Indeed Mr Aversion notes that in a substantive sense, "[W]e already have an anarchist society and that no other society can, in fact, exist." The common "anarchist" cause of both laws and beneficial behavior is presumably operative).

My initial rebuttal does not directly contradict this view:

Since laws against rape specifically are newer than other laws, we can make scientific comparisons. And the data are unequivocal: making and strengthening laws against rape reduce the incidence of rape, and not just by incarcerating the rapists. Societies where rape is legally condemned have less rape than societies where rape is legally permitted.

There are, of course, a lot of other factors. But the scientific truth is unambiguous that without specifically coercive prohibition, those other factors are substantially weakened.

Correlation does not prove direct causation*, but it does suggest direct causation as a plausible hypothesis. Furthermore, indirect or common causation is more complex that direct causation, so positive evidence is necessary to substantiate these alternative hypotheses.

*"Correlation does not prove causation" is one of the most misunderstood and misused aphorisms in the philosophical examination of scientific epistemology.

We of course want to see a mechanism linking cause and effect; in the case of laws, however, the mechanism is immediately apparent: the police and prisons coerce people, and (with a lot of objectionable exceptions) seem to more-or-less use actual laws as a guide to their behavior.

Let us take a slight detour, though, and ask: what precisely is a "law"? In this context a law has the following essential characteristics:

1. A law is a social construct. It is an idea in people's heads, directly or indirectly, and the idea has a causal effect* on people's behavior by virtue of it being in their heads.
   
2. A law's primary effect is on coercive behavior, either to permit or prohibit specific kinds of coercion under specific circumstances. Typically (but not necessarily) some determinably specific and bounded body of law exclusively affects specific kinds of coercive behavior, usually overtly violent coercion.
   
3. A law exists and is propagated literally (typically by being written down, but in some archaic cases memorized literally). A law has precise, objectively determinable, content that is preserved across space and time.
   
4. A law is applied neutrally and objectively: in theory completely neutrally; in practice substantially and determinably as neutrally and objectively as we can practically manage.
   

*It's not essential or necessarily the case that the law has some particular effect or kind of effect, just that it has some effect, perhaps only the negative effects Mr Aversion alludes to.

These criteria are definitional, not normative. Something that meets these criteria is a law; just meeting these criteria does not establish if something is a good law, or that laws, by virtue of meeting these criteria, are themselves good. These criteria also differentiate a specific kind of social construction from colloquial or idiomatic uses of "law", such as, "The King's word is law," or the common discussion board standard, "Don't be a jerk." It's also clear that what we formally call "law" in most Western countries does indeed fulfill these criteria: We do have socially efficacious ideas, ideas that regulate the coercive behavior of the police, ideas that are written down and propagated literally, and we make an substantial and determinable effort (quite a lot of effort, actually) to apply these ideas neutrally and objectively.

Mr Aversion seems to propose or imply additional criteria, saying, "[I]f you have ever valued your own judgement over that of a lawmaker, you are an anarchist." Laws are apparently the arbitrary judgment of a specific person or group ("lawmakers"), and apparently must establish some sense or meaning of right or good.

(The alternative implication is that all societies are anarchistic, being composed entirely of anarchists ("every single person on Earth is an anarchist"); one supposes that as Mr Aversion self-identifies as an anarchist, he therefore not only recognizes that existing societies and nothing else are what actually exist and are therefore in some sense inevitable, but also meet with his positive approval. This interpretation does not seem consistent with the overall tone and content of his remarks.)

There are two problems with these additional criteria. First of all, they're unnecessary. Laws that are established by more-or-less common consent, rather than the arbitrary judgment of some "privileged group" would seem to be perfectly good laws. Furthermore, Mr Aversion (in email, reproduced in comments) seems to object specifically to the "written down" criteria, saying:

I think it is disingenuous to suggest that because something is written down on a piece of paper, it affects societal behaviour; disingenuous to suggest that the existence of rape laws reduces rape. Rape laws come into existence in societies tending towards better rights for women. The laws have no effect on rape statistics whatsoever; the laws are a consequence of the tendency not to rape in broader society. This is precisely my point. The laws contribute nothing other than a burdensome (and lucrative for some) overlay.

He is not objecting here to laws against rape because they were imposed by the arbitrary judgment of a lawmaker or because we value our judgment over these supposed lawmakers. He rather seems to imply that that the fact that they are "written down on a piece of paper... contribute[s] nothing other than a burdensome (and lucrative for some) overlay."

The specific benefits of writing down laws seems easily apparent: writing down a law and restricting at least certain kinds of coercion (overt violence) to only what has been written down provides consistency and especially predictability. I can know, by examining the statute, precisely what does or does not constitute rape; more precisely I know what behavior will and will not subject me to violent coercion. It seems that just this benefit alone is sufficient to justify the formality of actually writing down laws and enforcing them as written.

(That's all for now; I'll consider other elements of Mr Aversion's argument in further posts.)

Anarchism and voluntary cooperation

An important element of anarchism is voluntary cooperation. As with "authority", I think it's useful to examine precisely what we mean or could rationally mean by this term.

It seems clear that under modern economic circumstances, there's a substantial material benefit to cooperation. No individual can create all the material stuff she needs to live a "good life". Other people made the house I live in; other people grow the food I eat, other people built the electric generators and other people operate them to provide the electricity I use, etc. Furthermore, regardless of the infrastructure, very few of the material things we can create today can be created by just one person working alone. We have created a world full of "irreducible" complexity (which we know can evolve through the use of scaffolding).

This is, of course, an observation about present day economic realities. There's nothing in the "deep structure" of reality that logically or ineluctably requires cooperation. It seems entirely plausible that we could develop the technological and social infrastructure that would make individuals truly self-sufficient, without requiring self-sufficient individuals to live in material poverty. We do not, however, have that level of technology today.

One of the biggest ideological differences between left-wing anarchists (libertarian socialists) and right-wing "anarchists" (Randians, anarcho-capitalists, big-ell Libertarians) is how they view economic or physical necessity. Right-wing anarchists see economic necessity as being inherently non-coercive; and if someone through some circumstances can leverage or employ economic necessity to interfere with the will of another individual, they are still not "coercing" that individual. Left-wing anarchists see economic necessity as genuinely coercive, at least in some sense.

I agree with the left-wing anarchists: economic necessity is coercive, and someone who leverages economic necessity is himself coercing others. "Work for me or starve" is just as coercive as, "Work for me or I'll kill you." I disagree with left-wing anarchists, though, in that I see economic coercion as being a part of present-day physical reality; economic coercion is not a purely social construction. Our social constructions do not establish but rather manage and distribute (or concentrate) coercion by economic necessity.

Just as we don't have true freedom of religion unless we have the freedom to adhere to no religion at all, we don't have voluntary cooperation unless we have the freedom to not cooperate at all. And we must have the freedom not just to survive, but to live a "good" life without any social cooperation at all. But noncooperation is simply not physically possible today, and without the physical possibility of noncooperation, we cannot have voluntary cooperation. We're just arguing over what kind of involuntary cooperation we want.

As I see it, the social constructions around economic necessity differentiate anarchists, "socialists" and communists. Anarchists seem to more-or-less want to wish away or socially-construct away economic necessity. You cannot, however, wish away reality; you have to work to change it. Socialists want to equitably distribute economic necessity (or, rather, equitably distribute capital, the means to respond to it). But capital, under today's circumstances, must be concentrated to be effective. Since workers must cooperate to concentrate capital, noncooperation is untenable, and we do not have voluntary cooperation.

The communist solution is to socialize the concentration of capital, in much the same sense that we socialize the concentration of directly coercive power in the hands of a more-or-less (and presently less rather than more) democratically elected government.

Must as I completely agree with anarchists that society of autonomous individuals more-or-less immune to organized coercion is desirable, we can't just declare an autonomous society. We must instead create a bridge to such a society. The specific set of social constructions we call "capitalism" cannot form such a bridge, not because it concentrates capital, but because it concentrates capital in the hands of private individuals, and almost forces those individuals to use that capital for their own individual benefit, without regard to mutual benefit.

Communism means, and has meant since Marx, to do the best we can with what we have today to build such a bridge: a bridge from a society dominated by economic and physical necessity to one dominated by each individual's self-actualization. To the extent that historical communist governments did not build such a bridge, they failed at the task I would have set for them, and at the task that Marx set for them. We can talk all we want about why they failed (did they jump or were they pushed?) but lack of success for any reason is failure.

But failure is not necessarily thorough discredit. The accomplishments of historical communist governments are notable and dramatic, and we can plausibly attribute their failures to circumstances external or accidental. The nascent Soviet Union first faced a bitter "civil" war openly backed and supported by the West, followed by the explicitly genocidal Nazi regime, followed by the implacable hostility of a nuclear-armed United States. And neither Russia nor China suffered through the century of armed conflict that established what few "Enlightenment" values that became part of the West's common social construction (and the West seemed willing and easily able to abandon those values in their relation to their colonies, leading to excesses as gross as the Belgian Free State, or the less malevolent but still socially distorting colonization of India).

It's not by any means a perfect or optimal solution, but communism still seems to be the best we can do presently to build an economic and social system that will indeed lead to the development of an autonomous society.