Rothbard-Boetie Paradox

Economics Political Theory
1

Ok, so this isn’t a true paradox, but it does illuminate the tension within the voluntary/coercive dualism which undergirds modern libertarianism.

The divide between market and state is synonymous with the divide between voluntary and coercive action, also called economic means and political means by Oppenheimer. Rothbard explains the unique coercive status of the state:

“All other persons and groups in society (except for acknowledged and sporadic criminals such as thieves and bank robbers) obtain their income voluntarily: either by selling goods and services to the consuming public, or by voluntary gift (e.g., membership in a club or association, bequest, or inheritance). Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion, by threatening dire penalties should the income not be forthcoming.”

But Rothbard recognizes that the state requires not only production off which to feed, but a certain level of ideological support. In the introduction to Boetie’s Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Rothbard concedes that

“every tyranny must necessarily be grounded upon general popular acceptance. In short, the bulk of the people themselves, for whatever reason, acquiesce in their own subjection. If this were not the case, no tyranny, indeed no governmental rule, could long endure. Hence, a government does not have to be popularly elected to enjoy general public support; for general public support is in the very nature of all governments that endure, including the most oppressive of tyrannies. The tyrant is but one person, and could scarcely command the obedience of another person, much less of an entire country, if most of the subjects did not grant their obedience by their own consent (emphasis added).”

How is it that the state is an institution that is essentially voluntary and at the same time the embodiment of coercion, or the “organization of politcal means” in Oppenheimer’s words?

The solution that I think most libertarians hold is that while some (actually most) individuals support the state willingly, any given individual is still coercively subjected to the state regardless of their personal choice. While this effectively resolves any paradox, it also admittedly undermines the hardline dichotomy between market and state. The state is not qualitatively different from the market–at least not in the voluntary/coercive sense–but is instead quantitatively different.

I think this leads libertarian thought in one of two directions: either a rejection of ethical/moral content in favor of an economic approach (embodied in the non-Rothbardian Misesian project) or an embrace of the complexity and “thickness” which comes out of this insight (embodied in the left libertarian project).

2

Do you think that fraud is voluntary?

3

No, but I also don’t think fraud is purple, sexy, or any other number of adjectives. We probably agree that purple/non-purple and sexy/non-sexy are poor dualisms for analyzing society, and I am raising a question as to whether voluntary/coercive is also a poor dualism in certain cases.

4

@mik: Great post. I think there is a danger inherent in fundamentalist views on the use of force and the legitimacy of retaliation. Specifically, it is my view that law emerges from the verbal resolution of what would otherwise have been violent disputes. If the initiation of force and retaliation are never legitimate then law would be paralyzed since either party could always say to the other, “Or else what? If I don’t agree to such-and-such resolution of this dispute, what are you going to do to me? Initiate violence? Retaliate against me?” to which I think the correct answer is “Yes!” If you don’t participate in verbal dispute-resolution, the failure mode may be physical violence. That’s the whole reason to participate in law in the first place.

So, the problem with the State goes even deeper than merely that it uses the threat of (the initiation of) violence or retaliation to get its way. A participant in a (valid) legal dispute is also implicitly relying on the very same threat: participate in verbal dispute resolution or things will be resolved through more direct means. The thief cannot thumb his nose at the shopkeeper whose merchandise he swiped precisely because the shopkeeper might hire someone to (lawfully) beat the thief or simply forcibly recover property from the thief in the amount he would have been awarded had the case been handled in court. Such actions would certainly not qualify as “self-defense” in any intelligible definition of the term.

As far as the tacit consent of the majority to rule (even by a despot), I think this is still an unanswered question. Here’s some interesting attempts at answers (YMMV):

https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/territorial-disputes-within-the-wolf-population-unfinished-unpolished-seeking-feedback/17514

http://incompressible.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-does-government-exist.html

Clayton -

5

My point was that, in order to gain general acquiescence, states commit massive fraud against “their” citizens. So if you don’t think that fraud is voluntary, then you shouldn’t think that general acquiescence of states by “their” citizens is voluntary.

However, I too find the voluntary/coercive distinction to be inaccurate, which is why I prefer aggressive/non-aggressive.

6

The fact remains that the state is institutionalized aggression against people who do not believe in its existence.

Furthermore, not only taxation is aggression but raids of private property and incarceration for drug use.

Many people support the existence of the state in some arbitrary utopia, but when it comes to a specific policy they think it violates their rights.

7

Autolykos,

To say that states commit fraud against their citizens is to make a distinction between state and citizen which might not exist, as well as miss the varied individual roles. Does a police officer necessarily commit fraud against a baker? Does a congressman’s receptionist necessarily commit fraud against a doctor? How can you adequately distinguish between a state individual and a non-state individual?

Whether we call it voluntary/coercive or aggressive/non-aggressive, the problem is in making the distinction in the first place because both aspects apply at different times, contexts, and points of view. Since a state can’t be all aggression all the time, then it only follows that non-aggression is a necessary condition of a state. Like I said, this isn’t a true paradox because it can be resolved by breaking it down to the individual level, but it does raise interested questions about the relationship between market and state.

Clayton,

Thank you. I think you are onto something when you say that “a participant in a (valid) legal dispute is also implicitly relying on the very same threat: participate in verbal dispute resolution or things will be resolved through more direct means.” We can certainly pidgeonhole this into a voluntary/coercive dichotomy, but would that add to our understand of dispute resolution and justice? We probably both agree that it does not.

8

Does a police officer necessarily commit fraud against a baker

Consider that police officers sign a contract that they will uphold the law, which is aggressive in itself.

9

Wheylous,

I think you are trying to read me as if I’m supporting the state and its endeavors (I’m not). I’m not questioning whether or not the police commit aggression, I’m questioning whether we can meaningfully analyze society through the concept of aggression. And you took this particular quote out of context–I was pointing out that any given act of fraud between a member of the state caste and the non-state caste needs to be treated as a specific event and not in the abstract.

10

Sorry, but how is the concept of aggression flawed?

11

I never said the concept of aggresion is flawed. I said: “I’m questioning whether we can meaningfully analyze society through the concept of aggression.” Now imagine if I said “I’m questioning whether we can meaningfully analyze the human anatomy through the concept of plumbing.” I wouldn’t be talking about plumbing as such, but the aplication of plumbing to something which it might not do so well at accurately describing. See?

12

Alright, but I still fail to see how aggression may be inadequate to analyze society (maybe you covered it and I did not understand).

13

I think it’s a perfectly fine way to analyze society. I think Clayton is onto something, but there is obviously a difference between aggression and the initiation of aggression. If somebody steals your property, you are perfectly fine in using force to retrieve it. Now you could say, “this relies on an implicit death threat if the theif resists, therefore your argument against the State is ad hoc,” (hearkening to the “pay taxes or get caged or shot” libertarian argument), but this is completely different. The difference is that you are just taking back what is yours; if the thief “resists”, he is, again, aggressing against you when he shouldn’t, which would give you the right to kill him if things got far enough.

So I don’t think the, “Or Else What?” point is a defeater against the initiation of violence at all. Maybe I misread you, Clayton.

14

Heres the short answer: “since a state can’t be all aggression all the time, then it only follows that non-aggression is a necessary condition of a state.” If you are interested, you can go back to my original post to see why this is the case. I’m on my way out of the office, so I can elaborate on why that is a problem when I get home.

15

Isn’t “aggression” typically defined such that it necessarily involves initiation? So maybe you meant to say “there is obviously a difference between coercion and the initiation of coercion”?

16

It depends on how you define “adequately”. :stuck_out_tongue:

I understand and agree that state agents, nominal or otherwise, do not always commit aggression - or fraud, for that matter. Nevertheless, the public support of a state typically rests on fraud, in the sense that the public by-and-large sees the state as something other than what it is. Granted, I’m speaking rather aggregately here. However, institutions do not arise by the actions of isolated individuals.

Anyways, at the very least, I’d say that state agents commit fraud when, in the course of their duties, they knowingly tell people things that are false.

In theory, I see no reason why a state couldn’t be all aggression all the time. Regardless, I do agree that the boundary between state and market is fuzzier than many libertarians would like to believe. From what I understand so far, states seem to have arisen from the privately owned land holdings of kinship groups, along with some other notions that I find pernicious. An excellent example of the blurriness of state vs. market IMHO is that of Ancient Greece.

17

But you’ve abstracted away all the complexities of real life… you’re taking back what you claim is yours. If you’re threatening someone with force, the question at hand is whether you are justified in doing so; is what you’re seeking to reclaim really yours? Who, if anybody, regulates this process and ensures that force is only used to recover property rightfully?

I think that the best answer is that individual prudence and self-restraint are the best regulator, so long as individuals are 100% liable for their actions at all times. Let’s say the shopkeeper kicks down the thief’s door, rapes his wife and ransacks his house when the thief refused to return the item he stole. Is this a lawful response? The only way to know is to hold the shopkeeper legally liable for his retaliatory actions. If he has responded disproportionately, then he has committed a new crime. Alternatively, let’s say the shopkeeper accosts the thief in the street and threatens to kill him if he does not return the stolen property or its equivalent value. Is this proportional? It seems less criminal than the prior example but my view is that we have no idea unless the shopkeeper is held legally liable for his actions and can be brought to suit where the matter can be argued out in detail.

What is clear is that if the shopkeeper has no lawful recourse to retaliation, then the thief can have no motivation to appear in a legal context. Either that, or we have to accept a universal Leviathan with the power to forcibly make people appear (or not appear, as the case may be) before a judge. It is the litany of terrible problems with the latter solution that has motivated me to consider the former.

Clayton -

18

Ok–so here’s a more concrete example of the kind of problems that I think might be overlooked by not taking a dialectic approach.

As libertarians, we look at non-aggression/aggression, voluntary/coercive, market/state and say “oh well I’m against aggression, coercion and their coressponding institution, the state, so I advocate non-aggression, voluntary action and their corresponding institution, the market.” This is a slight simplification, but you catch my drift. These dualisms set up an “either/or” scenario: its either voluntary or coercive, its either market or state.

Libertarians also have a specific theory of the state which recognizes that markets precede the state. Furthermore, we know that the state, as the embodiment of aggression, depends on the market because it is unable to produce for itself. To quote Rothbard again: “the State obtains its revenue by coercion, by threatening dire penalties should the income not be forthcoming.” Communism demonstrated that the abolition of markets is a pretty good way to starve off a state.

When anarcho-capitalists advocate the market over the state in a mutually exclusive way, they are neglecting that the market is also a necessary condition of the state. There is a real risk of inadvertantly helping to maintain or grow the state by supporting what is essentially the state’s fuel. Its like putting more sheep in the pasture and expecting less wolves to show up.

To be clear, I’m not saying that market anarchism is impossible, I’m saying that dropping the contexts can mask certain issues in libertarian theory which need to be adressed.