The Hard Case: When Electing Anarchists Is Counterproductive

Economics Political Theory
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I recently wrote a blog post which I called The Hard Case: Why Electing Anarchists Is Counterproductive. It was inspired by Wendy McElroy’s essay Why I Would Not Vote Against Hitler.

McElroy’s essay contains two main arguments. The first argument is that by voting against Hitler one would have to vote for another candidate, presumably a ‘lesser evil.’ McElroy thus opposed voting for this less evil saying that the vote “attacks innocent third parties who must endure the consequences of the politician I have assisted into a position of power over their lives.”

But, what if the candidate running against Hitler was not a lesser evil, but instead a consistent libertarian anarchist promising not to commit any acts of aggression if elected?

McElroy provides a second argument against voting for Hitler granting this possibility. She argues that she still would not vote against Hitler because her vote would legitimize the acts of aggression committed by those who are elected in the future. She says, “the essential problem is not Hitler, but the institutional framework that allows a Hitler to grasp a monopoly on power. Without the state to back him up and an election to give him legitimized power, Hitler would have been, at most, the leader of some ragged thugs who mugged people in back alleys.”

After pondering what it really means to say that a vote legitimizes the state/rulers I found that I agreed with McElroy that voting does legitimize rulers. I also concluded that in order to achieve a free society we must delegitimize rulers. And thus, I concluded that we should never vote, as voting (even for anarchists) legitimizes rulers and is thus counterproductive to the cause of a free society. So I wrote about this in my blog post linked to at the beginning of this post. I’m posting this here because I am curious to hear any comments / feedback on it.

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By not voting you are giving your consent to whomever the winning candidate is by default - after all, you didn’t vote against him…

I won’t vote for Romney or OBAMA in this next election, but I will vote, even if my third party candidate won’t win. But at least I didn’t give silent consent to the winner by not voting.

Not voting as some kind of protest to de-legitimize the candidates is simply denying the political reality that we have to live with.

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You’re denying the political reality we have to live with if you think your vote means anything.

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By not voting you are giving your consent to whomever the winning candidate is by default - after all, you didn’t vote against him…

I won’t vote for Romney or OBAMA in this next election, but I will vote, even if my third party candidate won’t win. But at least I didn’t give silent consent to the winner by not voting.

Not voting as some kind of protest to de-legitimize the candidates is simply denying the political reality that we have to live with.

That’s just completely false. If I declare myself a state and declare that I have the right to forcibly take your property from you and then offer you and some other people the option to vote for me not to take your property, your choice not to vote in no way represents “silent consent” to my act of aggression against you.

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I think the only logically consisten thing then is to NEVER use anything ever provided by the government. Including roads. Good luck and tell me how that works out.

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I think the only logically consisten thing then is to NEVER use anything ever provided by the government. Including roads. Good luck and tell me how that works out.

Why is the logically consistent thing to never use anything provided by government? Using the roads paid for by government extortion does not harm others in the way that putting someone into a position of unjust power over others harms them.

Walter Block made the same argument that you did and Wendy McElroy accurately pointed out why it is flawed here http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?item.1268.1:

Walter further argues, every last one of the anarcho-capitalists who object to his candidacy on this ground, use the sidewalks for walking, the streets and roads for driving, U.S. currency for making purchases, post letters with the U.S. postal service, visit state libraries, museums, etc. It ill behooves so-called libertarian anarchists, who do not fully understand either of these two philosophies, to object to Ron Paul’s actions, which are in this one way indistinguishable from their own.

There is a difference of kind between walking down a sidewalk and electing someone to a position of unjust power over unconsenting others. Henry David Thoreau captured the difference well. In his pivotal work On Civil Disobedience, Thoreau maintained that no one had the obligation to confront, disobey or take any position whatsoever toward the state so long as his or her actions did not injure the person or rights of an innocent 3rd party. Otherwise, it is quite proper for a person to go about “the business of living” and deal with the state when and as it is prudent. Case in point: Although Thoreau did not like to pay taxes, nevertheless he did so when money was demanded from him to pay the salary of a teacher in his village. The tax he famously refused to pay was one that supported the Mexican American War; he refused to have his money used to harm innocent others. Assisting a politician into a position of unjust authority is a direct assault upon the rights and well being of the innocent 3rd parties over whom he asserts his power. Walking down a sidewalk is a difference of kind, not of degree.

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In case if you haven’t, I suggest you read Spooner’s No Treason, since his views on voting are what you are going towards.

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In case if you haven’t, I suggest you read Spooner’s No Treason, since his views on voting are what you are going towards.

Thanks for the recommendation. I read part of it a while ago, but I forget most of what he said, so I’ll make sure to read it all sometime soon.

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Tell me this: If you walked on the street one day and say “I give permission to Hitler to kill everyone”, does that make you liable for damages caused by Hitler?

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@Wheylous: Excellent question.

Voting is an inconsequential act. It is not an aiding or abetting of any kind because it simply makes no difference at all. It’s a lot like praying for God to destroy your enemies - it’s vicious but it certainly plays no causal role in whatever harm does come to your enemies.

And to the extent that our actions do aid and abet the government, much of it is simply unavoidable - like driving on roads or riding any form of public transportation (including going through the airport). The government has inserted itself into every aspect of life, so you “aid and abet” aggression 100 times a day just going about your daily activities.

What is clear is that the government is an agent of moral and legal confusion. By forcing you to aid and abet its aggressions out of ordinary regard to your self interest, you are forced into the compromising position of balancing your legitimate interests (e.g. not going to prison) against the aggressions which your compliance enables the State to engage in. For example, not paying your taxes could be considered the highest form of resistance to government aggression but I don’t recommend trying it - at least, not without taking a great deal of care - because you are likely to end up in prison.

By getting out of bed and going to work in the morning, you are directly contributing to USG’s worldwide campaigns of violence and oppression - including the bombing and torture of untold numbers of innocents. Yet if you don’t pay your taxes, you will go to prison. The only way to avoid paying them is not to go to work at all (starve). There is no “morally free and clear” path available.

But in this very observation lies the answer - the only reason things got this way in the first place was the lack of moral clarity regarding the true nature of the State’s actions. Getting that moral clarity back is the first step which will set in motion an inexorable process of collapsing the Murder Inc state that has wrapped its tentacles around this country - and the whole globe. This is why the State has always sought to monopolize religion first - moral instruction is the existential threat to the State.

Consider all the rah-rahing of USG’s bloody and wicked involvement in WWII, including carpet and nuclear bombing of entires cities for the express purpose of killing innocents and complicity in the wholesale slaughter of as many as 3 million Russian refugees returned to Stalin in Operation Keelhaul. Our moral compass is so upside-down and backwards that WWII is put forward as the canonical example of just war in public policy debates! The reasoning behind this is so abysmal it defies words - “Hitler was so bad that we were justified in doing literally anything to stop him, even wholesale aerial bombardment and murder of entire cities of innocents!”

Just grab the average person off the street and strike up a conversation about WWII. Within five minutes, you will understand the magnitude of the task of undoing decades or centuries of corrupt moral indoctrination. The idea that a few reforms here and there can reverse the tide is a complete failure to really grasp the scale of the problem. That doesn’t mean there’s no hope - I believe that the State order is ultimately fighting gravity but they’ve been spectacularly successful at it for, oh, about the last four or five millenia.

Clayton -

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Clayton, I think this is one of those areas that gets the knee-jerk reaction towards the process of working on decentralizing the State and living in a world surrounded and “owned” by various governments. Yes, we pay taxes and use services provided by the government, because in a lot of circumstances that’s reality where we live. Our intent is to change that, because we perceive those as negatives. We drive on roads, because we must, but we do not consent to the government owning the roads by driving on them. They have a monopoly of force on any given territory, but that doesn’t mean one can’t strive towards changing that. It’s akin to saying a Jew in a concentration camp consents to Nazi Germany because they accept the food given by the State; one does not consent voluntarily to these things, they simply are living their life how they see fit with their own grievances towards how things are run.

As far as WWII goes, I had an employee (around 19-20) once ask me why were we over there, I was stunned by the question so I really didn’t know what to say.

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@Bert: I’m not opposed to people taking a variety of different courses of action in opposition to the status quo. I think some of them are less effective (e.g. trying to “change things from the inside”) than others. My point is more theoretical - until a reformation in moral ideas is effected, no lasting, meaningful change can occur to the status quo. Reformation of how people think about morality is the necessary and sufficient condition for the abolition of government insofar as it is a perversion of healthy social order.

Clayton -

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Voting is an inconsequential act. It is not an aiding or abetting of any kind because it simply makes no difference at all. It’s a lot like praying for God to destroy your enemies - it’s vicious but it certainly plays no causal role in whatever harm does come to your enemies.

I think the meaning of “aiding or abetting” is important here, but I am unsure of the exact meaning. I agree that voting, even for Hitler, wouldn’t directly cause any harm to anyone. Indeed it would be an inconsequential act. You’re just making a mark on a piece of paper.

However, as I argued in my blog post, I think that it can be said that voting causes (in some sense) people to commit more acts of aggression. I say this because most people are deluded into think that people who receive a majority of votes also receive the right to commit aggression (rule). The people who have this delusional belief then choose not to speak out against or otherwise work to prevent the acts of aggression committed by these people who receive the majority of votes or committed by the people who enforce the aggressive laws that the people who received the majority of votes write. So while voting may not directly cause anyone harm, in some sense I would say that it does perpetuate the delusion that people have that governments are legitimate organizations, thus meaning that when people commit acts of aggression in the name of government, fewer people react to this and instead passively accept it as legitimate activity. So in this sense I would say that voting does lead to harm to people.

Actually, this is analagous to praying that “God” destroys your enemies. If someone publicly prays that “God” harms some people and others can observe that this person wants harm to come to those people, then they now know that if they harm that person then they won’t have to worry about retaliation from the person who is praying.

Tell me this: If you walked on the street one day and say “I give permission to Hitler to kill everyone”, does that make you liable for damages caused by Hitler?

No, I wouldn’t be “liable” for damages. But, in some sense you could indeed say that I would be partially responsible (not in a legal sense) for Hitler’s crimes. For example, if a million people living near me started yelling out “Kill PRA! Kill PRA!” I would rightfully feel scared for my life. If someone did end up killing me, then I think it would be correct to say that everyone who participated in this hate speech against me would be partially responsible in some sense for me being murdered. Only the actual murderer could be held legally responsible, but there is a sense in which the other people yelling out for my death would be responsible. I think this is analagous to voting. Perhaps voting is inconsequential in that all you’re doing is writing on a piece of paper who you want to become the “President of the United States” (which doesn’t mean anything–it doesn’t grant the person any extra rights, etc). Yet, given that that person campaigns to commit acts of aggression if elected then I would say that voting for him is analogous to saying “Hitler, I want you to kill everyone,” or “Kill PRA!” So it’s not completely inconsequential.

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Nonsense, even our messed up Statist law would not hold people liable for that. There is a concept called “inciting violence” but I don’t believe this has its roots in common law (I could be mistaken, it’s an interesting point, for sure). As a general rule-of-thumb, only some kind of credible and imminent threat can constitute assault - the law, for example, does not consider a letter mailed to someone that says “I’m going to murder you” to be assault because the individual who mailed it isn’t around to carry out the threat. But if he’s standing in arm’s reach, waving his fists and screaming “I’m going to murder you!” that’s probably assault, even if he doesn’t hit you.

I analyzed this problem before - I can’t remember the thread - but basically I argued that assault that does not involve actual property damage (an actual strike of some kind) is real but still needs to be limited to some kind of property, otherwise you open a pandora’s box where just about anything can be considered assault. In my theory, I tied it to unilateral imposition of risk.

Risk is kind of like garbage on your front lawn: we pay people to take it away because it has anti-value or disutility. So, unilaterally imposing a significant risk on someone is like dumping garbage on their lawn. It makes them poorer by transferring something of anti-value or disutility to them. I don’t know what is “significant”, but clearly it must be something more than just waking up and getting out of bed in the morning which could, in theory, contribute to someone’s harm. So, it is a kind of theft in the same way that using someone’s front lawn as your own personal landfill disposal is a kind of theft.

This is why I think for unarmed assault to occur, you have to be within arm’s length. Armed assault, you only need to be within the operating distance of the weapon (knife, gun, club, whatever) and the weapon must be brandished in some way that is menacing, simply holding it or displaying it doesn’t constitute assault. This isn’t too far off from what the current law is, which is surprising - that is, until cops enter the picture and then the law is completely f—ed up.

Clayton -

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bolded for emphasis

Nonsense, even our messed up Statist law would not hold people liable for that…

I understand that one wouldn’t be “liable” for damages that Hitler causes by voting for him. I was saying that there is a sense (a non-legal sense) in which someone can be considered partially responsible (maybe “responsible” isn’t the right word either) for Hitler’s actions. Perhaps a better way to say it is to say that by voting for Hitler (or by saying that you want Hitler to kill a bunch of people) you would be increasing the liklihood that Hitler would commit mass murder. I understand that this does not make you liable for Hitler’s crimes, but my point is that by voting for him you would be making it more likely that he commit acts of aggression and/or you would be increasing the likelihood that many people choose to passively accept his rule. So in this sense voting is not a completely inconsequential act. It does tend to lead to certain things happening (such as widespread acceptance of the state’s rule as “legitimate”), it just doesn’t make you legally liable for the states’ crimes.

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I think that it can be said that voting causes (in some sense) people to commit more acts of aggression.

You’re shifting the goal poasts. You are arguing that voting for Ron Paul (or any anarchist for that matter) is bad. I highly doubt voting for RP would mean he would commit more acts of aggression.

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@OP

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I’m a libertarian.

Let’s say that I vote for a candidate who openly plans to commit aggression.

What are the personal consequences for me?

Because it sounds from your essay and the essay from McElroy that, at worst, I’m in danger of losing my libertarian card.

“When you refuse to vote, however, the deluded people notice your action and see that it is not consistent with their delusion that voting matters. If voting really did matter—if whoever received the most votes really did gain the moral right to commit aggression—then you would vote. But, you refuse to vote. Consequently, the deluded are forced to question their belief. Of course it’s possible that they could dismiss your act of non-voting by saying that you choose not to vote out of apathy. But, assuming that they know that you are not apathetic, your choice to not vote is very unsettling to them, at least compared to the choice to vote which would not make them think twice about their delusion that voting matters.”

How would I, a registered voter, know whether you’ve ever voted or not?

The state doesn’t hand that information out to registered voters. All we get is a date and a time to show up. Voting is done, at least in GA, in little voting booths. I can’t see who the people ahead of me are voting for or if they’re even voting at all. If there are people who aren’t showing up to vote then I don’t notice.

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@Wheylous

Shifting the goal posts from what? I never said that by voting for someone you are liable for the damages that they cause when they commit aggression. Clayton misinterpreted me as saying that (which is why I reposted my comment that he replied to highlighting what he must have missed).

You are arguing that voting for Ron Paul (or any anarchist for that matter) is bad.

Yes.

I highly doubt voting for RP would mean he would commit more acts of aggression.

It’s not just RP. Voting for RP could mean that Obama commits more acts of aggression unchallenged also. It has to do with the effect that voting has of perpetuating the delusion that many people have that whoever receives the most votes receives the right to commit aggression. It doesn’t matter whether you vote for Obama or RP. Either way it’s just the fact that you’re voting that contributes to the statist delusion that those who receive the most votes gain the right to rule.

Look at it on a macro-scale. If nearly everyone voted then most people would never question their delusion that voting matters–that voting can give people the right to rule. However, if very few people voted then perhaps many more people would question their delusion and realize that the fact that some people cast votes does not mean that the people they vote for gain extra rights.

Imagine if a mafia somewhere decided to have an election in an attempt to appear legitmate. Imagine they gave the people in the city that they ruled over the option to vote between a few candidates. Would there be high or low turnouts at the election? My bet is that the turnouts would be very low because the people would recognize that the mafia does not have the right to rule. In response to being offered the chance to vote for the head of the mafia they woud say, “No, I am not going to vote because I do not recognize the mafia’s right to rule so I am not going to participate in their elections.” It’s true that the act of voting would not represent consent to the mafia’s rule nor represent a statement that one consider’s the mafia’s rule justified, yet people still would refuse to vote due to the likely chance that others would misinterpret their act of voting as meaning that they do believe the mafia’s rule to be justified. And clearly they don’t want others to think that they think that the mafia is justified, because then that then increases the chance that those others think the mafia is justified, which in turn hurts the cause of the free society. Thus, a vast majority of the people would likely refrain from participating in the mafia’s election. In the same way I argue that we shouldn’t participate in government’s elections (no matter who we vote for, RP or anarchists included) because doing so necessary increases (or helps maintain) the legitimized nature of the United States mafia, allowing it to be able to rule, thus hurting the cause of a free society.

So again, it’s easy to dismiss a single vote for RP as having no effect, but I think it’s clear when you look at the macro-scale effects of voting that voting (no matter who you vote for) hurts the cause of the free society by making governments seem legitimate to so many people.

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Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I’m a libertarian.

Let’s say that I vote for a candidate who openly plans to commit aggression.

What are the personal consequences for me?

Because it sounds from your essay and the essay from McElroy that, at worst, I’m in danger of losing my libertarian card.

Seeing as you read my essay (thanks) I’ll say this: Walter Block accused McElroy of not being a libertarian for not supporting Ron Paul. I consider that a nonsensical claim. Similarly, I would say that Block is still very much a libertarian even though he supports Ron Paul. I wouldn’t say there is any danger of losing your “libertarian card” what that is, whether you choose to vote or not.

The personal consequences of your vote to you would be so small as to be almost unoticeable. The personal consequences to you of spending 20 minutes of your time to go make a mark on a piece of paper would be, in my opinion, a waste of your time, but you may value your time differently.

How would I, a registered voter, know whether you’ve ever voted or not?

…If there are people who aren’t showing up to vote then I don’t notice.

They probably wouldn’t. As I said in my previous post to Wheylous, I think you really need to look at the macro-scale effects of large numbers of people voting to see the detrimental effect that it has. Right now I believe it’s something like 40% of Americans vote in presidential elections (I think it’s usually less when a president is going for a second term and more when both the republican and democrat are new). But, imagine if that number was less than 1%? If 99% of people choose not to vote, what difference would that make?

I think it is clear that if that many people refrained from voting then many more people would wake up from their delusion that voting matters–that voting can give people the right to rule. I think our government would become less legitimized and look more like a mafia (see the second to last paragraph of my last post) and then fall apart completely. So your one vote may be negligible and nobody may be sure if you actually voted or spolied your ballot or whatever. But, I still maintain that by voting your are hurting the cause of the free society. I say this because of observation of the macro-effects of vast numbers of people voting or refusing to vote. And again, as I said in my blog post in order to achieve a free society we should be trying to get rid of rulers, not trying to get nice rulers. And in order to get rid of rulers we need to wake people up from their delusion that rulers are or can be legitimate. And because I think the electoral process is a major factor in deluding most people into thinking that the rulers are legitimate, then I think we should refrain from participation in it for the reasons stated earlier.

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Voting isn’t aggression, and it doesn’t constitute consent to be ruled. So a libertarian qua libertarian (and by libertarian I mean someone who accepts libertarian principles, not the broader Blockean meaning of libertarian) can have no objection to voting. Political philosophy has nothing to say about this matter. Which means the question ‘is it ever a good idea to vote?’ must be decided by something else rather than just political philosophy.

So we might rephrase the question by bringing in a specific goal: ‘is voting productive or counterproductive to the cause of a free society?’

I think there’s an error here. Voting is not the only thing that legitimizes rulers in the eyes of the masses. There are lots of things that legitimize rulers, such as the erroneous beliefs that rulers are necessary or beneficial for justice, equality, fairness, national defense, law and order, to provide a safety net, to steer the market, to protect workers from greedy capitalists, consumers from dangerous products, and on and on. All of these things make the state legitimate in the eyes of the masses too.

From this larger context, voting can be said to be productive to the cause of a free society, if voting is used as a means to help eradicate those all those other erroneous beliefs held by the masses.

You have analysed the act of voting in isolation, and yet you’ve used your conclusion to answer a wider question, a question which necessarily requires consideration of the bigger picture. The bigger picture is that there are many, many other reasons why people believe in states, and a Ron Paul presidency, for example, would do so much to eradicate these beliefs that voting for Ron Paul to try to make that happen far outweighs the benefits of non-participation, in terms of the effect on the perceived legitimacy of the state.

The night is young, the revolution is only just beginning, and the time for mass non-participation in the political and voting system has not yet come. There is more to be gained, at this stage, by playing the game and using it to our advantage, to reach a wider audience with our message.