The borders of the “Roman Empire”, and the size of its government, constantly changed throughout that time.
It would seem like 200+ years of trying to limit government through the use of voting would tell us that it doesn’t work. You end up with what we have now. I don’t think it matters what people think of anarchy. It is an individual transformation, not a national effort. I think a lot of people are confused on that. The minarchist wants to reduce the size of government, the anarchist wants to abstain from being governed. You can be a succesful anarchist inside of a huge state, but you can’t be a succesful minarchist inside a huge state.
When the minarchists claim that we are working towards a common goal, I just can’t agree. I used to think that you could spread the message through political means, but particularly in the last two years, I found that to just not be true. The political machine is set up to absorb any type of revolutionary thought. They (the government) haven’t become this successful at doing what they do, which is limiting freedom and liberty, without learning how to deal with threats to their sovereignty. The government is already nothing but a tool of force and fraud. Why anyone believes that they won’t use that force and fraud to retain their power is beyond me.
The government cannot be reformed without the active cooperation of the government, so the answer to your question is no, it is in fact less practical to reform government than to oppose government.
I’ll have to disagree. I agree that voting, per se, is not necessarily advantageous to the long-term goals of the anarcho-capitalist. The crucial question is what the voting concerns in the first place. The assertion that voting is, forever and always, not good strategy is false for two reasons:
First, voting can actually advance freedom in the short term. Second, voting can undermine the state under certain circumstances in the long term. The two go hand in hand. For example, suppose that the government were to immediately allow every citizen to go into the voting booth and cast a “Yay” or “Nay” vote on whether or not the state should have the power to usurp land via the takings clause of the Constitution. In this case, voting “Nay” is not an affirmation of state authority, nor does it reinforce the institutional framework of the state. Rather, it is a condemnation of state authority in this particular instance and a rebuke of the institutional framework under which the state presently operates. So, clearly, voting is not necessarily and always violative of long-term goals for the attainment of full liberty, as represented in anarchy. It is, in contrast, an advancement of those goals when utilized in the proper context.
Voting all the time and every time is obviously a foolish belief from the market anarchist standpoint, because such a policy would, as you said previously, merely reinforce the states authority in the eyes of the public. This is, however, not an attack on the case-by-case approach that actually advances freedom in the short term as well as the long term. If voting is only utilized in those instances where state power and authority can be drawn into question or condemned outright, it can be a great tool, among many, in the armory of the market anarchist.
Hey IrishOutlaw! Hows it goin? (This is Box Proper [:P])
Good to see you on here brother.
Forcing an individual to accept a system of voting is immoral and violates individual sovereignty. However, the very system that one is subjected to might on occasion be a mechanism for self-defense i.e. you could vote to weaken the state or pass laws that permit secession or vote to end voting or prohibit all but voluntary payment of taxes.
At the end of the day coersive voting systems would not be so great a menace if the individuals voting were self-educated and responsible. These individuals would ultimately vote themselves out of slavery.
No, reform is the last line of defense for the political class to hold onto their positions of power. Reform reinforces faith in the system. The “if only we get the ‘right people’ in government, it can work” syndrome. That the productive class adherents of state capitalism and state socialism both suffer from this same delusion serves as further proof that the two systems of statism have no substantive, only superficial, differences. Reforming the state can make it more tolerable, but it is intolerance to the state which must develop and become widespread among the productive class if there is to be any hope of removing the parasitic political class from their positions of power over us.
Not to any significant degree, no. It is only by seeing the state as an enemy, by constantly having to avoid it and work outside it, and by dealing on a regular basis with peaceful counter-economic alternatives, that any significant portion of the productive class will come to see anarchy as desirable.
You’re still thinking politically. If we wanted people to vote for anarchy, we’d have to deal with that problem. Getting people to engage in counter-establishment economics, the peaceful alternative to the state that we offer, is relatively easy. The more the government involves itself in the legal “white” market, the more difficult it becomes for people to continue to pursue their own happiness through it, and so the more people turn to the alternative we offer. The path to liberty is not to reform the system, it is to replace it, to build the infrastructure of the new society in the here and now, to sap the strength of the political class by denying them ever greater amounts of tax revenue and corporate profits, and increasing their enforcement costs, until all that is left of the state is a hollow shell of its former self. Trying to convince people that something they cannot see or experience for themselves is better than what they have now is far more difficult than simply showing them a better way, by leading them to liberty through example and getting them to participate in their own liberation from the state.
The borders and government of Rome both grew with time, both having started small. The larger it grew, the more ineffective it became at holding onto what it had acquired, until finally it collapsed.
Agreed. This mentality is counterproductive. People are flawed. Systems and ideas, however, stand the test of time. That is why I like what www.downsizedc.org is doing. They are trying to pass specific legislation that ties the hands of government, and does not depend on who gets elected. Their strategy depends on how much pressure is applied to already elected officials.
There exist a myriad of cases both historical and current that demonstrate the lethal inaccuracy of this statement. Research Guatemala, Cambodia, and Zimbabwe. The majority of the people in these nations fear and hate their government. You have a good chance of dying if you fight these governments. Force is the biggest problem here. Dictators come to power via an iron fist. All opposition must be crushed. Furthermore, dictators and unchecked governments are not stupid. They disarm their citizens/slaves first. The only way for your strategy to work is for the majority of people to be armed with information, virtue, and ammunition. This is why the American Revolution succeeded where others failed. A citizenry armed only with guns will create a military dictatorship worse than the original government. Ultimately, the idea driving the overthrow determines what happens after the bullets stop flying. What intrigues me further is that if the citizens of a republic are so educated about the corrupt nature of government, then why don’t they change the system through less forceful means.
Suppose that you know a thief is breaking into your house through the window. It makes no sense to sit there and say, “I’m going to wait until the thief smashes the window and actually has my money and gun in his hand before I take action.”
This statement strikes me as a bit Utopian. The states’ response to peaceful alternatives to the state has always been coercion. If you are siphoning off profits and not paying your enslavement fee i.e. taxes, then the state will call you a terrorist or a mafioso. You will be attacked. Moreover, remember that their exist irresponsible people that are use to relying on the government for their basic needs. If you are denying the state resources, then they will claim that you are preventing the poor from being housed and fed. Everyone looking for a free lunch becomes your enemy.
This does not mean that individuals should not engage in counter-establishment economics. It just means that it is not relatively easy. Just ask a drug dealer. Some activities are more socially acceptable than others of course.
Many anarchist libertairians claim it immoral to vote or to engage in political action-the argument being that by participating in this way in state activity, the libertarian places his moral imprimatur upon the state apparatus itself. But a moral decision must be a free decision and the state has placed individuals in society in an unfree enviorment, in a general matric of coercion. The State -unfortunately- exists, and people must necessarily begin with this matrix to try to remedy their condition. As Lysander Spooner pointed out, in an enviorment of State coercion, voting does not imply voluntary consent. Indeed, if the State allows us a periodic choice of rulers, limited though that choice may be, it surely cannot be considered immoral to make use of that limited choice to try to reduce or get rid of State power.
- Murray Rothbard The Ethics of Liberty ch 24. p. 186-87
Great post, I agree 100%
I agree as well, as I noted in this(link) thread. The position is apparently wildly unpopular!
After thinking about it for a while, I’ve come to the conclusion voting is an acceptable means in striving for an anarchist society (not as a sole means and it certainly is not the best one), but does not come without qualifications.
First off, there’s the issue of voting for candidature. I dont see how it can ethically be defended. The fact that you vote for one thug over another with nothing but rhetoric and promise to back up such an action must imply trust in that person. Through that trust you entitle them with both power to lessen the role of government or worsen the situeation by expanding it. It is quite possible that a candidate go back on every single thing he promises once elected, In fact it happens over and over. Not universally, mind you, but the possibility of worsening you and your peer’s situeation still exists. Blind faith is put in a man to mitigate the state. The man has no actual accountability for his actions except to the state (as far as the american political system is concerned). Certainly there is a probability that the actions promised will be carried out, however the risk that something more brutal will come about through their election is not nonexistant. As an anarchist I certainly believe everyone is entitled to risk their own freedom, the problem is, an elected official does not affect only that individual. An anarchist, therefore, should not be entitled to risk the freedom of his fellow anarchist and should not vote for a candidate.
The only time I see voting as a viable option to an anarchist is when ammending the social contract. The social contract, a document that the state is “supposed” to follow, is quite irrelevant. Voting to ammend it and protect “personal” right or negate an invasive ammendment is fully deffensive. The state does not nessesairily have to carry out the stipulations of that ammendment, however that doesn’t leave an individual any worse off than when they would not have voted nor does it offer the possibility of a worse predicament than the one he already finds himself in.
Certainly this is not the most effective way of abolishing or destroying the state. Non-compliance, black marketeering, and agorism are all much more effective in attaining individual freedom, but I dont see how it can’t be considered an alternative.
I know! haha
So you’re saying that history and current events demonstrate that tolerating the state makes it go away?
Zimbabwe’s economy is currently almost entirely counter-economic. It’s only a matter of time before the state there collapses. Cambodia and Guatemala don’t, to my knowledge, have well developed counter-economies yet. Hate and fear of the government does not imply intolerance to it. The people of Zimbabwe have stopped tolerating their government, opting instead to conduct most of their business outside the state-controlled market, thus starving it of resources and forcing it to hyperinflate in a futile attempt to maintain its power. When hyperinflated central bank funny money can’t put food on the table of Zimbabwe’s police and military forces, the state’s enforcement apparatus will collapse and with it the state itself. All they’re missing is a consciously libertarian aspect to their counter-economy.
They may attempt to do so, but it is possible to hide one’s arms. The worst governments have ruled over those who were never really armed in the first place; forceful disarmament isn’t an easy task to accomplish, especially when there’s a large number of anti-statists working to undermine the effort, as there would be here. Just because a government passes a “law” doesn’t mean you have to obey it.
No, that’s the only way your strategy can work. To achieve electoral victories you need to convince a majority of voters to support your ideas, and if that continues to fail (as it has for centuries), then the only option left to you is armed rebellion without anything even close to popular support. With your attempts to shrink the government, you actually make the situation worse as the state-controlled market becomes more productive while the free market, the counter-economy, becomes less attractive and is weakened by your efforts. My strategy, the agorist strategy, does not require any sort of mass conversion. We certainly need more converts than we currently have, yes, but our major requirement is mass sympathy, not mass conversion. Our requirements aren’t as difficult to achieve and our methods for achieving them are likely to be far more effective than yours.
The American Revolution failed.
Agorists aren’t the ones advocating forceful means.
I agree. Why you political types insist on doing precisely that is beyond my ability to comprehend; it’s plainly absurd.
I didn’t say it would be easy, I said relatively easy, as in easier than the Utopian “we can vote the government out of power” fantasy to which you seem to cling.
So? Perhaps you should read the New Libertarian Manifesto. Konkin’s already covered this. Our overall strategy is already far better developed than yours (which seems to be basically “tell the statists you don’t like them and they’ll go away”), but I’m not about to copy-paste the whole thing here.
Phases 2 and 3, already covered by Konkin.
That’s more a problem for your strategy than it is for mine. Sympathy for an “alternative lifestyle” is easier to obtain than conversion to a political ideology. Most people don’t care about politics, never have, never will; they don’t think about the same things we do nor should they ever be expected to do so. This is not a problem for my approach, but it’s an intractable problem for yours.
It is relatively easy when compared to your mass conversion political approach.
So then surely you’ve engaged in counter-economic activity?
I’m pretty sure everyone has at one point in their life, whether they know it or not.
There are a few principles I’d like to mention with respect to the ethical side of electoral voting.
The first is that you are not voting for a candidate per se. You are voting for a “Promised Action Package” (or PAP), which is what the candidate represents. All candidates offer to change (or maintain) the status quo, and it is that change (or maintenance, as the case may be) that is the lure to get the public to vote for them. All those who seek an office must act as part of their job responsibility, and it is their description of the various ways that they promise to act in that role that is their PAP. To make it clear that it is the PAP specifically that you’re voting for–and not the candidate himself–try to imagine supporting a candidate for office who didn’t have a PAP. How could you? The guy could turn out to be a Stalin; there’s just no way to know. A candidate without a PAP is just a body with a name, nothing more. Yet you can imagine the converse: supporting a PAP without a candidate. People do it all the time when they support a party (which is essentially a collectively agreed upon PAP) for office without knowing exactly who it is that’s going to be nominated for them. Nor do many of them care so long as the nominee fulfills the party’s PAP as expected.
Now that we know that it’s the various PAPs that get people agreeing or disagreeing, supporting or vehemently opposing, and not the candidates per se, we see next what exactly a vote is.
A vote is an appointment of the thing being voted for, chosen by the one granted authority (whether legal, “natural,” or whatever) to cast said vote. It can be extrapolated that only those PAPs which are appointed (by majority, unanimity, or whatever) are those that are brought to fruition. Those PAPs which are not appointed are not brought to fruition, and, ex post improvisation aside, if no PAP is appointed, no PAP is brought to fruition. It must be understood that when one says, for example, “I’m voting for McCain” what he actually means (whether he knows it or not) is, “I’m appointing the PAP represented by the man named John McCain.” The word “vote” does not, in my opinion, adequately express the authoritative implications of the appointment that is the purpose of the vote. Without the authoritative aspect of the vote, the appointment is lost, and the “vote” is reduced to nothing but a voiced opinion (like being 17 all over again!), and as such is no longer fit to be called a vote.
Next, we need to recognize that all those actions included in the PAP (a $1.40 cigarette tax, a $3.00 tariff on lug nuts, or whatever), are just that–actions. As Mises has pointed out, action, by definition, includes the inextricably-linked concepts of means and ends. We find, consequently, that in appointing a PAP we are appointing all the means and ends wrapped up in it. In fact, we are handcuffed to them. If Candidate X promises the ends of a $3.00 tariff on lug nuts, we must choose to go along with his means as well if we wish to see that tariff through.
This brings us to the principle of vicarious responsibility for the appointed PAP. I expect this might be the only major point of contention among us. Personally, I adhere to it. For those who don’t know, vicarious responsibility holds that those who intentionally “bring about” an effect without actually being that effect’s proximate cause, are, nevertheless, at least partially responsible for it. A cliched example might be, “Yes, the Nazi generals who appointed the deaths of so many millions of people are morally guilty. Perhaps not of murder per se, as they may not have taken anyone’s life with their own hands, but in appointing others to murder on their behalf they were nevertheless in the wrong. They were patrons of genocide.” The appointer, thus, is vicariously responsible (i.e., morally culpable), partially, for the action–or PAP–that was appointed (assuming accurate knowledge of the action’s or PAP’s contents).
Now we need to look at the contents of the various PAPs at our political buffet bar and see what we might wish to appoint. The principle that will be useful here (with respect to vicarious responsibility) is the distinction between the Categorical (what all the candidates have in common) and the Quantitative (what all the candidates seem to disagree on). What do virtually all candidates agree on? Taxes, at the very least. There must be taxes. The choice made in the conflict between “taxes!” and “no taxes!” is that categorical aspect which unites all our candidates. The issue of how much taxation, by contrast, is the quantitative issue, and very few candidates seem to agree here. Given that the application of ethical judgment is primarily directed at the categorical (i.e., “Should you steal his wallet or not?”) and not the quantitative (i.e., “How many dollars should you steal?”), we see immediately that we can, in a very real sense, lump all of these candidates together–Obama and McCain, Nader and, yes, even Paul. The foundational difference between them is not a categorical one (their advocacy of the “limited privilege”–particularly for themselves–of the right to initiate force as a means to an end unites them), but rather a quantitative one (i.e., “How broad in scope should the force be?”).
A common mistake regarding the understanding of various legislative proposals, such as the Libertarian favorite “lower taxes,” should also be set straight. It is commonly thought that we are offered opportunities to appoint “lower taxes,” “reduced regulation,” or other such measures. Strictly speaking, this is mistaken. The promise of “lower cigarette taxes,” for instance, cannot be a part of a PAP simply because “lower cigarette taxes” is a description of merely the effect of an action. It does not describe the action itself (or the action as such). (And it might be noted here that most successful politicians–Obama is a great example–use rhetorical flourishes to describe the glorious effects of their PAPs without so much as hinting at that PAP’s actual contents, which, of course, would have the undesirable effect of subjecting their claims to criticism.) As effects of actions cannot be coherently appointed without also appointing the corresponding actions themselves (they are handcuffed), we can see that in our considerations of appointment we must be looking to the action which brings about the reduction of the cigarette tax if we’re to have accurate ethical bearings on our PAP.
In keeping with our example of “lower cigarette taxes,” we see that in appointing such a proposal we are not appointing “lower cigarette taxes” as such, but rather appointing a cigarette tax of, say, $1.40 instead of a cigarette tax of, say, $1.50. The collection of a $1.40 tax on the sale of a carton of cigarettes is the appointed action itself, while the notion that we now have “lower cigarette taxes” is a description of the appointed action’s effect. To return to our distinction between the Categorical and the Quantitative, we see that we are appointing the category of taxation at the quantity of $1.40. More bluntly for our ethical considerations, we are appointing the category of taxation (whatever the quantity) as a means to our ends. If we consider taxation to be coercion (and few deny this), it isn’t more than a step or two to see that, through the lens of vicarious responsibility, appointing others to coerce on our behalf has unequivocally made us patrons of coercion. And it is certainly “on our behalf”–if we deny that we can morally coerce people, we certainly cannot logically appoint others to do that very same thing. The fact that it is the tax collector doing the job and not you describes nothing but the current logistics of expediency.
I deny that this is acceptable. Those who disagree may imagine themselves at the familiar location of Crusoe’s island, where the only other inhabitants unanimously appoint a death sentence for you because your hair didn’t look that great this morning. In addition to your executioner, there are the twenty-four other individuals who appointed your murder.
If those twenty-four others are not as guilty as the executioner, well, please continue voting. (And please excuse the proverbial Nazi war generals.)
I’m in agreement with you, however on the case that you vote for a candidate’s promised actions and platform and not him I think is wrong. It’s been my understanding that the election of an official based on their promised action is simply the election of an official. Bush promised not to “rebuild countries”, yet here we are. A level of trust in the candidate as an individual must be established before someone makes a vote. If I vote for a candidate who will abolish the income tax, but then he doesn’t I am still responsible for that, and he is still not accountable under the state to carry out the stipulations by which I justified my vote. Unless i’m mistaken about the election process and the legal discourse of it whereby the candidates release a platform (or “PAP type” document) that must be followed word for word or face termination of office by the state. Under this circumstance trust must be put in the state, not the candidate, to adhere it’s doctrine.