Bastiat happens to be one of my favorite authors and I was just skimming through The Law again and I came across something I never really thought about. Why is violence against the injustices of the State looked as a bad thing?
Bastiat states:
Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter — by peaceful or revolutionary means — into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.
and
No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them.
What is the line between using your mouth to state your disatisfaction for the State and the people using force?
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Well, killing people, burning down buildings and looting aren’t exactly constructive enterprises.
Bastiat put a lot of common sense in these lines. He knew perfectly well that all people (though I have my doubts about the present bamboozled populace) have a breaking point. When this breaking point is reached two things may happen.
The first is that the looted will simply walk up to the looter and say “listen, we’ve had about enough of being squeezed like lemons. Either you do something abou this situation fast, or we won’t answer of our actions”. The answer at this point is usually one: “share the plunder” or wholesale bribery as I call it. Bribing people is much more cost effective than fighting them: Byzantium knew it was much cheaper and infinitely less risky to bribe a Lombard duke or a Turkish chieftain than fighting him. 9 times out of 10 bribery will work so it’s a chance well worth taking. Give the looted a share of the plunder, flatten them, pretend to make them part of the power apparatus, call them brothers and they’ll let themselves be bribed.
The second is a sudden explosion of pent-up rage. This usually happens when either the ruling class is so sure of its own power as to fail to accept previous overtures by the looted or when the same class has deluded itself into thinking the looted will be forever subdued. The French Revolution of 1789 is a perfect example. As I said before when usually subdued people start a revolution a lot of blood will flow. Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities give a perfect picture of the “wrath of the subdued”.
But Bastiat was a genius, and a genius with lot of common sense. He knew very well that while killing, burning and looting are not the answer, there are other ways to force the looters to terms. His approach may be called “pre-Gandhian” and I am personally surprised nobody is suggesting it (or Gandhi’s own version) today. Peaceful resistance is possible: refuse to pay some taxes (Gandhi making his own salt to break government monopoly), refuse to comply with unjust legislation, or just sit there and do absolutely nothing. Looters are thrilled when people riot in the streets since they can send in their thugs and show themselvs to be “tough”. But when you are faced with people just standing there what do you do? Sure you can fire at them but then what? Do you want to be the one igniting a full blown revolution? Do you want to hang from a tree while your family is being tortured and killed?
But Bastiat was a genius, and a genius with lot of common sense. He knew very well that while killing, burning and looting are not the answer, there are other ways to force the looters to terms. His approach may be called “pre-Gandhian” and I am personally surprised nobody is suggesting it (or Gandhi’s own version) today. Peaceful resistance is possible: refuse to pay some taxes (Gandhi making his own salt to break government monopoly), refuse to comply with unjust legislation, or just sit there and do absolutely nothing. Looters are thrilled when people riot in the streets since they can send in their thugs and show themselvs to be “tough”. But when you are faced with people just standing there what do you do? Sure you can fire at them but then what? Do you want to be the one igniting a full blown revolution? Do you want to hang from a tree while your family is being tortured and killed?
Nice insight. I don’t think people in this country would have the sense to do what Ghandi did or even something remotely. The latter stated that “When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”, hasn’t it come to the point that the majority has lost their “moral sense” of more than a century of propagandizing Welfare State policies? Look at our community and people with the same thinking as us, we have ZERO respect for the States inhuman and immoral laws towards private property and unfortunatly we are a very small quite minority.
I remember from Liberalism Mises said “When debating and warning the Antiliberal of their policies, the Liberal is pitted against the people as someone who has his own ‘special interest’ and not the interest of a whole, when in fact Liberal policies do the exact opposite”. People have lost their moral sense in being complacent with high taxation, and confiscation and forced removal from their home through eminiment domain laws, but it doesnt matter to them because it’s indirectly affecting them.
It doesn’t answer the OP’s question, but it does address the issue raised by some posters on why there is seemingly no rebel culture in america.
I think it has to do with a sort of “fashionable rebel” image that has been set up that is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the established order of things, while actual rebels are laughed at, ignored, and ridiculed. The establishment has set itself up to look anti-establishment, which is very clever.
While I agree, I think the initial propulsion lays in the power-structures ability to keep the mob with their bread and carnival. The day food lines stretch miles and people cant watch UFC cuz they can’t pay their cable bill, will be the day things start to change in our modern society.
Let us hope this change is one you can practice (as opposed to just believe in…)
I believe Mark Crovelli said it best in an article on LRC. Violence is not currently an answer because 1) “our side” would be vastly outnumbered and outgunned, and 2) “their side” could paint any/all acts of violent resistence by “our side” as acts of aggression. Gandhi actually faced the same situation with the British Raj in India, hence why he took the path of non-violent resistence. I, for one, advocate doing exactly that here and in the rest of the world. But the biggest part of that isn’t resistence per se, it’s education. As Crovelli points out, what’s the point of engaging in even non-violent resistence if everyone around you thinks you’re a fool or worse for doing it? He asserts (and I agree) that a libertarian’s time is better spent right now by “evangelizing” to those around him. That’s what I’ve been working on, and my efforts haven’t all been in vain!