I’ve been having a problem lately about war. If we were to have an anarcho-capitalistic sort of situation wherein the government becomes voluntary, would it be legitimate for, let’s say, my voluntary association to go to war with yours on the basis that your association is harming you and violating your natural rights? Not being paternalistic - as in protecting you from yourself (like going to war with one association because it’s allowing its participants to do drugs) - but using force against you in order to exploit you (like forcing its governance on you and then making you do slave work for an elite)? For instance, if the south were to allowed to secede from the union, would it have been alright then for the north to go to war with the south in order to liberate the slaves?
Asking whether it is legitimate is moot. Ask instead whether any worthwhile objective can be accomplished by randomly aggressing against people who have purchased sophisticated protection.
Slavery ultimately relies on control of capital. In order to be stable, the slaves cannot be hired away by other capital-owning producers for wages. The slave owner must have the power to forbid other capital owners from employing the slaves.
In order to break slavery, all the USA had to do was allow the slaves to escape into the USA. On the other hand, if some capital owners in the CSA demanded the right to hire slaves for wages, then the USA could legitimately intervene to protect them from the slave owners.
Since the USA would have to tax its citizens to acquire the capital needed for war, then wouldn’t USA intervention in the CSA still be illegitimate?
The only legitimate reasons for war that I can conceive are
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War against the state. That is, a war with the intent to remove the state. A war to remove the current state to simply create a new state would not fit into this category.
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In retaliation against an act of aggression against your property.
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Retaliating against an act of aggression on a customer, or otherwise complying with obligations to defend the property of an individual. Essentially a PDA going to war to fulfill its contract obligations is legitimized. Furthermore, I reckon that family members or friends going to war in support or in one’s behalf. This category is nulled if the individual who has had their property aggressed against does not wish to retaliate.
Note in all cases, wars conducted by states are illegitimate.
I feel stupid now - I assumed that these voluntary associations would be like the state for some reason! Why in the hell would someone choose that type of association that enslaves them??
If at very least because they require taxation to fund them but most wars go beyond this minimum standard and commit many other crimes.
As Rothbard said " all government war’s are unjust"
If I remember correctly Rothbard held that the American Revolution (colonists) and the Civil War (South) where “just” wars.
This in the sense that their side was far less guilty. Not that it was immaculate. For example the patriots were to the loyalists exactly what the Brits were to the patriots.
The only possibility is fraud. But you would not be permitted to wage war on the fraudsters, because the people being defrauded would not authorize you to wage it on their behalf.
The only legitimate way of combating them would be by revealing their delusions to the defrauded. This is also the most tactically effective way.
That’s right.I think that’s because the american war was essentially a war of secession (and thus freedom) from the british empire and the south was seceding from the north.In both cases it was self defense.
Rothbard’s rules of a just war(from For a New Liberty) if I remember correctly are :
- It must be waged in self defence only.No wars of aggression ,imperialism or “spreading democracy”.
2.No violations of rights must occur before during or after it.No taxation to fund it.No conscription .No torture of innocents.
- No innocent non combatants must be harmed.Weapons and strategy should be limited to the two warring parties.This dismisses the possibility of using nuclear weapons or ones which harm people indiscriminately.
how does the taxation rule fit with the south seceding though? surely there was taxation involved.
on a side note,Stephan kinsella has recently come out opposing american secession from the british(I’m not sure how he felts about the american revolution) .While I more often than not agree with him , I think his argument is wrong here.Basically he bring’s up Hoppe’s point about monarchy being preferrable to democracy and says that the breaking away from britain led to everything we have today.While that’s true in a sense I think it’s better america broke away and led to the british empire crumbling eventually than never seceded and having the empire remain.
Seems interesting enough. Can you please provide links?
I think Rothbard meant that in the sense that the cause was just. As a historian he surely knew that the actual conduct of the war was not. After all you have atrocities like the Quantrill raid and Andersonville prison.
Oh. Doesn’t that violate his criteria for a just war?
I just discovered they had conscription too
“The United States first employed national conscription during the American Civil War. The vast majority of troops were volunteers, however; of the 2,100,000 Union soldiers, about 2% were draftees, and another 6% were paid substitutes.[2] Resistance to the draft touched off the New York Draft Riots in July 1863. The Confederate president Jefferson Davis proposed the first conscription act on March 28th, 1862, and the act was passed into law the next month[3]; resistance was both widespread and violent, with comparisons made between conscription and slavery. Both sides permitted conscripts to hire substitutes. In the Union, many states and cities offered bounties and bonuses for enlistment. They also arranged to take credit against their quota for freed slaves who enlisted.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_States#Civil_War
http://blog.mises.org/archives/010218.asp
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/029145.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/028614.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/028819.html
I’m really not sure what to make of these articles.Maybe we have thought too well of these events. I still disagree that secession from the british was itself a bad thing.
Yes, but I meant the “just” part in the sense of his Two Just Wars lecture that Merlin brought up. Not in the sense of the full criteria you mention.
Secession can never be a bad thing. That’s why Kinsela’s idea look interesting.
The more I think about it the more I’m inclined to think Kinsella is right.At first when I read it I was a bit horrified. Among libertarians the american revolution has been traditionally seen as the expression of all we believe in even if it was a failure.It’s very hard and a bit scary to think outside that paradigm but as I often find with Kinsella and others we must follow where reason leads even if it’s seems an extreme and suprising at first.
I still disagree that secession was bad. As you say Merlin secession can never be bad BUT he’s right to point out that the american revolution and ‘civil war’ have many elements(conscription and taxation etc) which should be abhorrent to libertarians-minarchist or anarcho-capitalist.We really can’t deny these elements.Maybe we need to get out of this whole mentality that the founding fathers were incredibly honourable men instead of just like any other politicians (no matter how much they waxed lyrical about liberty,democracy etc).I mean among minarchists I’ve found the constitution almost worshipped as the key to all problems and in the end for minarchists it comes down to libertarian principles or the constitution and often they choose the latter over the former.
I can’t add an iota. Superbly spoken.
The problem with secessionists is that they always forget about the counter-secessionists. The Colonies seceding from the Crown and the South seceding from the Union sounds great. But what about the crown loyalists and the southern unionists? What about these people who did not want to become subordinate to and taxed by the new secessionist state? Would they had been allowed to counter-secede in order to rejoin the previous government? Of course not.
It is a problem that only anarchist libertarians have a solution to, by envisioning secession down to a single individual.
Theoretically, the Mises ideal of secession of individual villages would also do.