Does anyone know of a good book/essay written by an ancap that proposes a theory about how government came to be?
He is no necessarily an ancap, but is libertarian. Franz Oppenhiemer 's THE STATE. It obliterates any notion that government was voluntary or had a “social contract”. All government was formed by conquest.
Governments happen because people come to believe that they are necessary to maintain peace (the Hobbesian myth). For example, after the 30 year’s war, people thought that the old system could no longer maintain order in Europe and the territorial monopoly system was established under aristocratic rule. The Icelandic Commonwealth, after some years of strife, thought that turning power over to the King of Norway would finally settle things.
Of course, in none of these cases was peace finally established, which poses a much more interesting question: how can governments sustain themselves?
This statement makes me see red (like a bull) because it seems to imply that governments form voluntarily. They don’t.
There’s a sense in which the ideology of legitimacy always comes into play after the formation of the government. It’s not as if everyone in society unanimously gets together and says “we need a government”, “government is necessary”, “lets make a social contract” and proceeds to form a government. The actual formation of the government itself is always the work of an oligarchy, and there most often is indeed a period of conquest of some sort before the dust clears and a government is officially formed. At best, the people begin to asqueisce to the situation intergenerationally, but the formation of the government is not a result of them suddenly deciding that they need a government.
What is this oligarchy if not a previously-established government?
Government exists only because a group of individuals - cops, the military, politicians - use force and fraud to control people. If there was no force and fraud involved government wouldn’t last a day.
On the other hand, if government exists because the people think it’s ‘necessary’, then libertarians should admit that government is ‘voluntary’ and that we live in the best possible world…
It’s just a small group of people with good connections and money prior to it being a government. A gang basically. It’s not a government until this small group of people obtain a territorial monopoly and something resembling the taxing power. The territorial monopoly cannot be obtained voluntarily, it always involves some degree of land theft, and the taxation is basically the institutionalization of extortion intergenerationally.
Prior to this process, to the extent that it is a benign institution or association, it is nothing more than a country club or something like that and it seems silly to me to call it a government. To the extent that it is not benign to begin with, it could be called a gang or something along those lines.
Here is what worries me: if it is true that governments form on the basis of legitimate private ownership, if governments start out as nothing more than a benign and voluntary organization to protect private property, then libertarians should all gladly endorse statism and concede to the Marxists (who think that private property is a fundamental pretext to the formation of a state). If libertarians wish to continue to hold such an analysis and still want to oppose the state, then they must become some sort of anarcho-collectivist or anarcho-communist and propose that private property must be abolished before the government can be abolished, since private property will allegedly always lead to the formation of a government.
Governments form on the basis of special legal privileges being granted. It is both voluntary and incompatible with private property. There is no contradiction.
Calling it voluntary and proceeding to proclaim oneself an anti-statist is a gross contradiction. Being a libertarian who thinks the state is voluntary is a gross contradiction. If the state is voluntary, then you should become a statist by your own logic, since the state is therefore legitimate. Of course, the state is not voluntary or legitimate. The people who are subject to the authority of those who are legally privileged do not necessarily voluntarily agree to such privileges being granted or the authority of the people with such privileges. There is nothing voluntary about the interrelations between those with special legal privileges and those who are subject to the power of those with special legal privileges.
If you can’t see the problem with what you’re saying from a libertarian perspective, I don’t know what else to tell you. This is a matter of simple logic.
That is just a confusion on your part.
Hoppe has written often and in depth on the subject.
No, it is an awarness of an inherent contradiction that all anarchists that I know of reject. A voluntary state is a contradiction in terms. I reject the state precisely because it is not voluntary. If one believes that the standard for legitimacy in associations or organizations is voluntary association, then one must either reject the state on the grounds that it is not voluntary or construe the state as if it is voluntary and proceed to accept its legitimacy. One cannot have it both ways. This is a very simple matter of logic.
If you accept the preconditions and determinants for the formation of a state on the assumption that it’s voluntary, you must accept the consequences of such logic, which is state legitimacy. If states form as voluntary associations, then we already are in market anarchism or the long-term product thereof. These are the logical implications of the premises in question.
If this was a complete summation then there would be no difference between the government and any armed gang. Yet there are many armed gangs and only one goverment, why?
Obviously there is something more to this.
Why is it impossible to have a factual debate about the nature of government without someone objecting due to some supposed moral implications?
Better to deny reality and insist that zero individuals cheerlead for the state then risk “legitimizing” the devil.
I would perfer to see government as the armed gang that controlled an area so utterly that within a matter of generations it’s true nature and beginnings as an armed gang has been forgotten. Some examples in which the state shows it’s nature of Raw violence is to look at african military dictators, there you will see one way a government can begin. To even use the term government gives it legitimacy. Government “governs” with the capacity to violence which it uses without any opposition, no one is willing to fight the state not because it is overwhelmingly strong, but because people’s moral evolution (Seeing “law” as an end unto itself rather than an end to justice is the premise apon which monopolistic law rests) is brought down over one or more generations, and they come to accept the armed gang that has controlled them as such a fundemental reality they begin to bestow apon it the same absolute justice they bestow apon a God, or Nature (The storm that killed your child is the same as the police officer who killed your child according to “The Law”.).
THere are also some similarites to Stockholm syndrome, this is the essence of Nationalism (Note difference between Nationalism and Patriotism). Identification with the armed gang which enslaves you.
Libertarian Ethics explicitly says that anything that is voluntary is legitimate, hence if the state is voluntary, it is legitimate.
Perhaps a states “Framework” could emerge “voluntarily” but it couldn’t aquire the means to maintain itself without coercion. It couldn’t “become” a state until it began using it’s special privilages, in other words, until it “acted” the part.
I thought libertarians believed that’s exactly the case. No substantive difference.
Because this particular gang is the most efficient…at using force and fraud.
I’m not saying that zero individuals cheerlead for the state. I know there must be hundreds of thousands of state-cheerleaders working at univertisities, the media, ‘think-thanks’ and so on and so forth.
Propaganda makes things easier for the state - no doubt about that. Still, I think that the state’s existence ultimately depends on force. If the state is not backed by force and fraud, then it is voluntary ? - there’s no third option. So people voluntary pay taxes. People go to jail voluntary. People voluntary ‘ban’ smoking and ‘voluntary’ fine themselves. Conscription is voluntary. Etc. That surely makes no sense ?
I think that the claim “the state survives thanks to fraud & force” is a factual claim. Of course fraud and force are immoral, but that wasn’t my point.
It is, but it is also incomplete.