Statism and the Unmaking of Reality

The state is, first and foremost, an institution whose overarching goal is the forcible subjugation of all the people who inhabit a given territory. However, what makes the state different from other coercive entities, such as organized crime groups, is that it enjoys some form of popular legitimacy. In other words, in addition to enslaving its inhabitants physically, it needs to secure their mental servitude as well.

Many forms of such servitude have been tested by rulers over the millennia, but by far the most effective among them is that of “representative democracy” coupled with the “welfare state.” “Representative democracy” is the illusion of universal participation in the use of institutional coercion. The “welfare state” is the reality of universal participation in the process of institutional parasitism. Together, they constitute what Frédéric Bastiat described in his immortal words as “the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody.”

An unobvious truth that has become increasingly transparent over the last few decades is that the “great fiction” in question is by no means limited to the economic or crudely political sphere. More specifically, this fiction exploits not only the alleged victimhood of the poor at the hands of the rich and that of the “disenfranchised masses” at the hands of the “privileged elite” but also that of women at the hands of men, blacks at the hands of whites, or the young at the hands of the old (and vice versa).

It is here that the nature of the state in its most mature manifestation comes clearly into view. Far from being exclusively the nexus of institutionalized aggression or even the instigator of permanent conflict, it also turns out to be the ultimate peddler of unreality.

This unreality appears on several interlocking levels. First, there is the unreality of statist promises: legal plunder can bring about general prosperity, legal counterfeiting can alleviate business cycles, and legal murder can secure world peace—none of which are true. Then, there is the unreality of state-manufactured grievances, in which women are the permanent victims of “systemic sexism,” blacks are the permanent victims of “systemic racism,” and the young (or the old) are the permanent victims of “systemic ageism.” Finally, there is the unreality of state-encouraged narcissistic or otherwise self-destructive phantasmagorias.

It is only at this final level that the potential for generating putative “social problems” that calls for “systemic solutions” is virtually limitless. For instance, state-sponsored “educators” can declare that free speech is not about being able to voice whatever views one wishes but about being protected from “hate speech” that may castigate one’s views as ignorant, evil, or ridiculous. Likewise, state-sponsored “medical professionals” can proclaim that genital mutilation can alter one’s sexual identity and make it conform to one’s supposed “true self” and that disagreeing with this contention is a criminal violation of human dignity. Finally, state-sponsored health bureaucrats can encourage one’s belief that a persistent bad mood indicates that one’s quality of life is so low that assisted suicide is the best option going forward.

In sum, statism, the ideology that begins with flouting the fundamental distinction between “mine” and “thine,” reaches its culmination in denying the even more fundamental distinction between sense and absurdity. Since every alleged problem grounded in absurdity is, by definition, unsolvable, multiplying such problems allows the state to multiply its edicts, committees, taskforces, and appropriations ad infinitum.

However, such multiplication must come to a halt as soon as a critical threshold of dysfunctionality is passed. Just as an economically absurd system with no market prices is bound to collapse—tellingly demonstrated by Ludwig von Mises—the same fate awaits a system shot through with absurdities related to other major areas of social coexistence, such as speech, health, procreation, and identity formation.

Thus, when the threshold in question is reached, the hypertrophic and increasingly farcical “great fiction” has to either voluntarily reduce its size by a substantial margin or—more likely given the current extent of special interest capture and institutional inertia—disintegrate violently under the weight of its accumulated layers of self-destructive insanity. In other words, when the amount of unreality peddled by the state on a routine basis becomes incompatible with the preservation of even a modicum of sane social life, reality is bound to reassert itself mercilessly.

If the latter scenario transpires, free individuals will be able to regain control over their lives, belongings, livelihoods, and life plans. However, if these free individuals are not to cede this control to some would-be earthly messiah who promises to rebuild a better civilization, they must never abandon timeless wisdom for the blandishments of wishful thinking. More specifically, they must not only make consistent use of solid economic theory and cogent social philosophy—which emphasize the indispensable cooperative role of private property, market prices, and sound money—but also pay homage to the organic institutions that nourish the human soul, such as the family, the local community, tradition, and religion.

After all, it is precisely these institutions that the state invariably tries to uproot and replace in its pursuit of political, economic, and cultural hegemony. It is also precisely these institutions that not only allow individuals to prosper in commercial terms but, perhaps even more importantly, to remain firmly grounded in the reality of social life and social cooperation, both intimate and extended.

In conclusion, defeating statism requires recognizing its nature not only as the ideology of permanent conflict but also as the most potent driving force of institutionalized unreality. In other words, accomplishing this task requires realizing that the “great fiction” in its fully developed form is equally fictitious in the realm of solutions that it claims to offer and in the realm of problems that it claims to identify. As soon as this realization becomes sufficiently widespread among liberty-minded people, their efforts will become genuinely robust, meaningfully inclusive, and solidly pragmatic—which is something that we should all welcome given how impactful our action or inaction is likely to be at this late stage of the fight.

[Reposted from Mises.org]

Values and Principles Against Ideological Jargon

The ideological jargon of hard totalitarianism aims at the subversion of values, while the ideological jargon of soft totalitarianism aims at the reduction of values to self-indulgent mush. In other words, the former aims at intercepting value discourse, while the latter aims at dissolving it altogether. Thus, to debunk the former one needs to be a man of principles among the unprincipled, while to debunk the latter one needs to be a man of principles among the unmanly.

The Main Danger of 21th Century Ideologies

20th-century ideologies were defined by their destructive seriousness: their aim was to destroy values by promoting anti-values. By contrast, 21st-century ideologies are defined by their destructive infantilism: their aim is to destroy values by promoting pseudo- and non-values. Thus, to neutralize the latter is not only to oppose the inversion of good and evil, but also, perhaps more importantly, to expose the trivialization of good and evil.

Power Conflicts Masquerading as Battles of Ideas

There is no conflict between "left" and "right" - there is only conflict between personal liberty and different forms of tribal enslavement. There is no conflict between "political correctness" and "political incorrectness" - there is only conflict between dispassionate factuality and different forms of emotional bluster. There is no conflict between religious fanaticism and "secular humanism" - there is only conflict between mature spirituality and different forms of ideological ritualism. And there is no conflict between the individual and society - there is only conflict between individual reason and collective madness.

Bad Old Ideas and Intellectual Opportunity Costs

Never, ever fall into the trap of believing that any supposedly new and better concept of socialism/"market socialism"/"democratic socialism"/"participatory economics", etc. has even a shred of scholarly respectability. All of the concepts that aim at achieving economic rationality and/or moral excellence on the basis of some form of political control over factors of production have been thoroughly and conclusively discredited by the razor-sharp economic logic of Bohm-Bawerk, Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard. In addition, since this logic had been nonchalantly ignored, we subsequently and unfortunately accumulated practically endless empirical illustrations of its truth.

In other words, there is nothing dogmatic, ideological, and close-minded about automatically dismissing or ridiculing all kinds of supposedly new and better socialist proposals, just as there is nothing dogmatic, ideological, and close-minded about automatically dismissing or ridiculing all kinds of supposedly new and better justifications for slavery, dictatorship, or eugenic racism. This is not a matter of ideological prejudice, but of basic management of intellectual opportunity costs. There are simply too many interesting and genuinely promising issues to think about to justify wasting time on exploring any further the intellectual and moral dead-end of institutionalized economic chaos known as socialism.

Rothbard's Button, Preference Change, and Transition to a Voluntary Society

Rothbard famously claimed that a principled supporter of a voluntary society has to be "a "button pusher" who would blister his thumb pushing a button that would abolish the State immediately, if such a button existed". I regard this metaphor as in one sense rather unfortunate, not because of its alleged "utopianism", but because of its ambiguity, while in another sense as deeply revealing of what being a principled and effective advocate of a voluntary society really involves.

On the one hand, if the abolition in question were to involve the instantaneous incapacitation of the existing ruling class and the disappearance of the financial and military resources that sustain the institutions of power, then this would provide at best a temporary relief. The result of such an abolition would not be the emergence of a voluntary society, but the emergence of what I call "statism without the state", i.e., the situation where a territorial monopoly of violence disappears, but everything else, including the mentality that legitimizes and supports its existence, stays the same. Needless to say, under such circumstances there would appear an almost immediate push for reestablishing a ruling class and the institutions of power.

If, on the other hand, pushing the Rothbardian button were to result in making the majority of the world's population instantly and fully aware of the flagrant evils, inefficiencies, and logical inconsistencies of statism, as well as of the vast economic and moral superiority of a voluntary society, then states would be truly and permanently abolished, joining slavery, legally sanctioned racial discrimination, and the divine right of kings in the dustbin of history.

If Rothbard's claim is to be interpreted in the latter way, it becomes clear that, far from illustrating the difference between the abolitionist and the gradualist approach to creating a voluntary society, it indicates that the difference in question is actually a moot point, since a voluntary society cannot be created by starting with dismantling the institutions of power (be it revolutionarily or gradually), but only by first changing the cultural and moral preferences of the majority. In the context of this latter task, however, there is no tradeoff between the advantages and disadvantages of abolitionism and gradualism to speak of, since, presumably, every advocate of a voluntary society would agree that the quicker the relevant awareness-raising efforts could progress and succeed, the better it would be. Thus, given the right choice of pro-voluntarist tasks and goals, the difference between the abolitionist and the gradualist collapses, indicating that the relevant disputes and trade-offs may lie somewhere else entirely.

Preference Change in Social Organization

Could the governments of the world reinstate slavery? Yes, they could. They possess sufficient coercive power at their disposal. But would they dare to do it? No, they would not. The prevalent social attitude toward slavery makes such an action uneconomic from the point of view of the calculus of power.

Could warlords and mafias destroy a stateless order and replace it with a statist one? Yes, they could. They might possess sufficient coercive power at their disposal. But would they dare to do it? Only if the prevalent social attitude toward statism made such an action profitable from the point of view of the calculus of power. And there is nothing inevitable as to what this attitude will be.

The pen is mightier than the sword. Ideas are stronger than violence, even that of the most organized kind. The stationary bandit is not a necessity and the defense entrepreneur is not an impossibility. To suggest otherwise is to claim that intellectual and moral progress in the area of social organization cannot happen, which, to say the least, is a historically and anthropologically dubious suggestion.

The Mundane Idea of Individual Liberty

If "ideological thinking" is to be defined as concerned with grand, comprehensive sociopolitical visions, which aim at assigning everyone a role in the all-encompassing "social organism", then libertarianism, with its basic, almost self-evident precepts, known to most of us since our sandbox days - keep your mitts to yourself, don't punch others, don't grab other people's stuff, live and let live - appears to be as non-ideological as any such precepts can be.

And, if "ideological thinking" is to defined as largely based on utopian fantasizing, then it seems to me that libertarianism qualifies as the voice of the most mundane and platitudinous common sense, consistent with our most ordinary notions of interpersonal decency. Incidentally, the same applies on the intellectual level to the school of positive economic theorizing that most libertarians subscribe to.

Quotes on Statist Hypocrisy and Doublethink

How is it possible to sanction, under the law of equal liberty, the confiscation of a man's earnings to pay for protection which he has not sought and does not desire? And, if this is an outrage, what name shall we give to such confiscation when the victim is given, instead of bread, a stone, instead of protection, oppression? To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury.
- Benjamin Tucker, "Address to Unitarian Ministers"

A man who would consider himself a bandit if, pistol in hand, he prevented me from carrying out a transaction that was in conformity with my interests has no scruples in working and voting for a law that replaces his private force with the public force and subjects me, at my own expense, to the same unjust restrictions.
- Frederic Bastiat, "Economic Harmonies"

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
- Frederic Bastiat, "Economic Sophisms"

They'll all be roving the land looking for chances to make the rich poor, to remedy the irremediable, to succor the unsuccorable, to unscramble the unscrambleable, to dephlogisticate the undephlogisticable. They will all be curing warts by saying words over them, and paying off the national debt with money that no one will have to earn. (...) The winner will be whoever promises the most with the least probability of delivering anything.
- H. L. Mencken, "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
- H. L. Mencken, "In Defense of Women"

The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. (...) He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a "protector," and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to "protect" those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. (...) Furthermore, having taken your money, (...) he does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful "sovereign," on account of the "protection" he affords you. He does not keep "protecting" you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. (...) In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.
- Lysander Spooner, "No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority"

If "we are the government," then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also "voluntary" on the part of the individual concerned. If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying that "we owe it to ourselves"; if the government conscripts a man, or throws him into jail for dissident opinion, then he is "doing it to himself" and, therefore, nothing untoward has occurred. Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered; instead, they must have "committed suicide," since they were the government (which was democratically chosen), and, therefore, anything the government did to them was voluntary on their part.
- Murray Rothbard, "Anatomy of the State"

In brief, the [statist] ideologists must explain that, while theft by one or more persons or groups is bad and criminal, that when the State engages in such acts, it is not theft but the legitimate and even sanctified act called "taxation." The ideologists must explain that murder by one or more persons or groups is bad and must be punished, but that when the State kills it is not murder but an exalted act known as "war" or "repression of internal subversion." They must explain that while kidnapping or slavery is bad and must be outlawed when done by private individuals or groups, that when the State commits such acts it is not kidnapping or slavery but "conscription" – an act necessary to the public weal and even to the requirements of morality itself. The function of the statist ideologists is to weave the false set of Emperor's clothes, to convince the public of a massive double standard: that when the State commits the gravest of high crimes it is really not doing so, but doing something else that is necessary, proper, vital, and even – in former ages – by divine command.
- Murray Rothbard, "The Ethics of Liberty"

We live in a world of curious moral thresholds, where gathering a sufficiently large clientele turns robbery into "provision of social welfare", Ponzi scheming into "provision of social security", and counterfeiting into "provision of financial stability".
- Myself, "Fixing an Upside-Down World"

When the king asked the man what he thought he was doing infesting the sea, the man replied with free-spoken insolence, The same as you infesting the earth. But because I do it with a little ship, I am called a robber; and because you do it with a big fleet, you are called an emperor.
- St. Augustine, "City of God"