“Is there not a contradiction within the very construction of [the government] as an expropriating property protector?” (Hoppe, “Private Production of Defense,” p.2)
A common argument used by anarchists against minarchism is that a government is an expropriating property protector, and hence is a contradiction in terms. In “National Defense and the Theory of Externalities, Public Goods, and Clubs,” Walter Block elaborates on this argument:
…to argue that a tax-collecting government can legitimately protect its citizens against aggression is to contradict oneself, since such an entity starts off the entire process by doing the very opposite of protecting those under its control. The government, by its very essence, does two things to its citizens incompatible with this claim. First, it forces the citizenry to enroll in its “defense” activities, and second, it prohibits others who wish to offer protection to clients in “its” geographical area from making such contracts with them, in preference to the one it itself offers to them, under duress. If true protection from violence includes the government itself, and there is no reason it should not, then it is this entity which is the prime rights violator. (The Myth of National Defense, p. 304-5)
In a previous thread, I argued that this line of argument was not sufficient to refute minarchism. Specifically, my argument was that if a minarchist argues that minarchy will protect all rights, then, yes, the self-contradiction argument is a sound refutation. But, the minarchist can avoid this contradiction by softening their position and arguing the weaker claim that minarchy will merely maximize the protection of rights relative to other political systems. The minarchist could say: “Government is a necessary evil. Yes, it violates rights, but it is better than all other political systems because it has the least rights violations, i.e. it maximizes the protection of rights.”
And this position is not self-contradictory. The minarchist is not claiming that all rights will be protected. Again, they are saying that by establishing a government that violates some rights, they are able to maximize the protection of other rights. Presumably, they would argue that anarchy would be a Hobbesian jungle, and conclude that minarchy is better than anarchy because the former protects rights more effectively than the latter.
Hence I concluded that to answer this argument anarchists must engage in a comparative analysis of anarchy and minarchy: they must show that anarchy can protect rights more effectively than minarchy; that the incentive structure of anarchy will create a greater tendency to protect rights than the incentive structure of minarchy.
But now I think that while the above argument would be true for a consequentialist, it would not hold true for a deontologist. As Long explains:
“The non-aggression axiom is not to be confused with a call to minimize the total amount of aggression – first, because the axiom is purely prohibitory and does not call for positive action of any kind; second, because the axiom does not countenance, as a minimization requirement might, the inflicting of a small amount of aggression in order to prevent a greater amount (e.g., conscripting citizens in order to deter foreign invasion). The prohibition on aggression thus counts as, in Robert Nozick’s terminology, a side-constraint to be respected, rather than a goal to be promoted. To be sure, adherents of the non-aggression axiom unsurprisingly do tend to favour the overall reduction of aggression in society (so long as such reduction can be accomplished without violating the axiom), but the non-aggression axiom per se calls for no such commitment.”
In other words, I was confusing the NAP with a minimization principle. But since the NAP is a prohibition on aggression, it doesn’t matter if anarchy has more total rights violations than minarchy; the fact remains that “inflicting of a small amount of aggression in order to prevent a greater amount” would violate the NAP, and hence is impermissible. So long as minarchy necessitates aggression, whereas anarchy could exist without aggression, then a deontologist must accept anarchy.
Of course, if deontology rejects any consideration of consequences (“Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus”), then it would lose much of its appeal as a moral theory. So what about a moral theory that gives at least some weight to consequences?
Long’s virtue ethics approach seems to be just such a theory. As he writes in “Why Libertarians Believe There is Only One Right”:
“My own position is that deontological considerations ground a strong presumption in favour of the [NAP]; that this presumption could in principle be overridden by sufficiently weighty consequentialist considerations; and that, nonetheless, consequentialist considerations in fact reinforce the [NAP] rather than overriding it.”
According to this view, the self-contradiction argument against minarchy would only work if the consequences of anarchy were not so bad as to count as “sufficiently weighty” to override the NAP. (I leave it an open question what counts as “sufficiently weighty.”) That is, if the anarchist can show that anarchy would not immediately break into total chaos, that there would be at least a modicum of social order, then minarchy is refuted.
Summing up, to refute minarchy:
Consequentialism requires showing that anarchy would have less total rights violations than minarchy.
Deontology requires showing that minarchy necessitates aggression while anarchy could exist without it.
Virtue ethics requires showing that minarchy necessitates aggression while anarchy could exist without it and that the consequences of anarchy would not be so horrible that they are “sufficiently weighty” to override the NAP.
This is a long post, but I want to apply my conclusions to Kinsella’s article “The Irrelevance of the Impossibility of Anarcho-Libertarianism.” Basically, Kinsella says that the consequences of anarchy are irrelevant to the justification of anarchy, so objections about the “workability” of anarchy are misguided.
Now, from a deontological perspective Kinsella is surely correct. If consequences don’t matter, then the fact that not enough people are willing to refrain from establishing governments cannot mean that the state is justified.
A consequentialist, on the other hand, will disagree completely with Kinsella. If side-constraints don’t matter, then minarchy would be justified if it is more successful in minimizing rights than anarchy.
But for the virtue ethicist, both side-constraints and consequences matter (with the former having generally more weight). Hence Kinsella would have to show both that minarchy requires aggression and that anarchy can “work” in that it would provide at least some social order.
