The Rational Versus the Anarchic Concept of Freedom
The concept of freedom when employed rationally, presupposes the existence of reality, and with it the laws of nature, the necessity of choice among alternatives, and the fact that if one resorts to force, one must expect to be met by force. Of particular importance is the fact that it presupposes the necessity of having the voluntary cooperation of everyone who is to aid in an activity—including the owners of any property that may be involved. After taking for granted the presence of all this, the rational concept of freedom then focuses on the absence of one particular thing: the initiation of physical force—in particular, by the government.26
In sharpest contrast to the rational concept of freedom is the anarchic concept. The anarchic concept of freedom evades and seeks to obliterate the fundamental and radical distinction that exists between two sorts of obstacles to the achievement of a goal or desire: “obstacles” constituted by the ordinary facts of reality, including other people’s voluntary choices, and obstacles constituted by the government’s threat to use physical force. For example, by the nature of things, it is impossible for me to square circles, walk through walls, or be in two places at the same time. It is also not possible for me, in the actual circumstances of my life, to win the Nobel prize in chemistry or the Academy Award for best actor of the year, or to enter the automobile or steel business. There are all kinds of such things I simply cannot do. And among the things I could do, there are many I choose not to do, because I judge the consequences to myself to be highly undesirable. For example, I cannot arbitrarily decide to walk off my job in the middle of winter to take a vacation in the sun, without the very strong likelihood of being fired. I cannot drive down a city street at ninety miles an hour, nor can I strike or kill another, without running the risk of paying the penalty for violating the law. And then, there are things that are possible for me to do, and that I would very much like to do, but that would require the consent of other people, which consent they are unwilling to give. In this category, are such things as having my views published in The New York Times or having this book assigned in courses at leading “liberal” universities.
Absolutely none of these facts constitutes a violation of freedom, a denial of rights, or anything of the kind. In order for a violation of freedom to exist, it is not sufficient merely that someone be unable to achieve what he desires. What is necessary is that the specific thing stopping him be the initiation of physical force; in particular, the government’s threat to use force against him in response to an action of his that does not represent the use of force.
The stock-in-trade of the anarchic concept of freedom, however, is to construe precisely such facts as a violation of freedom and rights. On the basis of the anarchic concept of freedom, it is claimed that freedom is violated any time there is anything that, for whatever reason, a person cannot do, from flying to the moon, to being able to afford a house or a college education that is beyond his reach, to committing murder.27
Ironically, the anarchic concept of freedom is implicitly accepted by conservatives and fascists, as well as by anarchists and hippies. This is evident in the arguments they advance when they seek to establish the principle that it is necessary and proper to violate freedom. For example, they argue that we do not allow a man the “freedom” to murder his mother-in-law or to speed through red lights and thereby threaten the lives of others. In propounding such arguments, the conservatives and fascists casually neglect the fact that such acts constitute the initiation of force, and are so far from representing freedom that their prohibition is what actually constitutes freedom.
The anarchic concept of freedom, of course, is present in the assertions of Communists and socialists that their freedom of speech is violated because they are threatened with arrest for attempting to disrupt the speech of an invited speaker by shouting him down or by speaking at the same time. This assertion by the Communists and socialists neglects the fact that their action constitutes the use of someone else’s property against his will—namely, the use of the meeting room against the will of the owner or lessee, who wants the invited speaker to speak, not the disrupters. It is thus the action of the Communists and socialists which is a violation of freedom in this instance—a genuine violation of the freedom of speech.
It follows from this discussion of the erroneous claims of the Communists and socialists that a prohibition on arbitrarily shouting “fire” in a crowded theater should not be construed as any kind of limitation on the freedom of speech. Arbitrarily shouting “fire” constitutes a violation of the property rights of the theater owner and of the other ticket holders, whom it prevents from using their property as they wish. When one holds the context of the rational concept of freedom, it becomes clear that it is no more a violation of freedom of speech to prohibit such speech, than it is to prohibit the speech of disruptive hecklers, or the speech of an uninvited guest who might choose to deliver a harangue in one’s living room. Violations of freedom of speech occur only when the speaker has the consent of the property owners involved and then is prohibited from speaking by means of the initiation of physical force—in particular, by the government or by private individuals acting with the sanction of the government.
Because of the confusions that have been introduced into the concept of freedom, it is necessary to set matters right in a number of important concrete instances. Thus, freedom of speech is violated not when an individual does not receive an invitation to speak somewhere, but when he does receive it and is stopped by the government (or by private individuals acting with the sanction of the government) from accepting the invitation or exercising it. It is violated precisely by Communist and socialist disrupters whom the police refuse to remove. Ironically, in the case of a live theatrical performance, it is violated precisely when someone arbitrarily shouts “fire.” Such a person violates the freedom of speech of the actors on stage.
The freedom of the press is violated and censorship exists not when a newspaper refuses to publish a story or a column that, for any reason, it regards as unworthy of publication, but when it is prepared to publish a piece and is stopped from doing so by the government. Thus, if I want to print my views in The New York Times, but can neither afford the advertising rates nor persuade the publisher to give me space, my freedom of the press is not violated; I am not a victim of “censorship.” But suppose I do have the money to pay the advertising rates or could persuade the publisher to print my views, and the government disallows it—that would be a violation of the freedom of the press; that would be censorship. It is a violation of my freedom of the press if the government stops me from mimeographing leaflets, if that is all I can afford to do to spread my ideas. Again, censorship exists not when the sponsor of a television program refuses to pay for the broadcast of ideas he considers false and vicious, but when he does approve of the ideas he is asked to sponsor and yet is stopped from sponsoring them—for example, by an implicit threat of the government not to renew the license of the television station, or arbitrarily to deny him some permission he requires in some important aspect of his business.28
In the same way, if I ask a woman to marry me, and she says no, my freedom is not violated. It is only violated if she says yes, and the government then stops me from marrying her—say, by virtue of a law concerning marriages among people of different races, religions, or blood types. Or, finally, if I want to travel somewhere, but lack the ability to pay the cost of doing so, my freedom of travel is in no way violated. But suppose I do have the ability to pay the cost, and want to pay it, but the government stops me—say, with a wall around my city (as existed until recently in East Berlin), a passport restriction, or a price control on oil and oil products that creates a shortage of gasoline and aviation fuel and thus stops me from driving and the airlines from flying—then my freedom of travel is violated.
What is essential in all these cases is not the fact that there is something I cannot do for one reason or another, but what it is, specifically, that stops me. Only if what stops me is the initiation of physical force—by the government in particular—is my freedom violated.
Subsequent discussions in this book will unmask the influence of the anarchic concept of freedom in the distortions that have taken place in connection with the antitrust laws—in the concepts of freedom of competition and freedom of entry, and in the related notions of private monopoly and private price control. They will also deal with the distortions to be found in the present-day notion of the “right to medical care.”29
Here it must be pointed out that application of the anarchic concept of freedom operates as a cover for the violation of genuine freedom. If, for example, having to work for a capitalist, as a condition of earning wages and being able to live, is a violation of freedom and represents the existence of “wage slavery,” as the Marxists call it, then it appears that when the Communists murder the capitalists, they are merely retaliating against the aggression of capitalists—indeed, of slave owners.30 Similarly, if, as the anarchic concept of freedom claims, freedom of travel or movement requires the ability to be able to afford to travel or move, then a state’s requirement of a year’s residency, say, as the condition of receiving welfare payments, can be construed as a violation of the freedom of travel or movement. Maintenance of such alleged freedom of travel or movement then requires the continued corresponding enslavement of the taxpayers, who must pay to finance it under threat of being imprisoned if they do not.
What is essential always to keep in mind is that since freedom—real freedom—is the absence of the initiation of physical force, every attempt to justify any form of restriction or limitation on freedom is actually an attempt, knowingly or unknowingly, to unleash the initiation of physical force. As such, it is an attempt to unleash the destruction of human life and property, and for this reason should be regarded as monstrously evil.
What makes the anarchic concept of freedom so destructive is the fact that in divorcing freedom from the context of rationality, it not only seeks to establish a freedom to initiate physical force, as in the cases of “wage slavery” and the anarchic concept of the freedom of travel, but also, on the basis of the consequences of such a perverted concept of freedom, provides seeming justification for the violation of freedom as a matter of rational principle. For example, the anarchic concept of freedom of speech, which claims that hecklers can speak at the same time as a lecturer and thus prevent him from communicating his thoughts, not only serves to legitimize the violation of the lecturer’s freedom of speech but also, if accepted as being a valid concept of freedom of speech, must ultimately doom the freedom of speech as a matter of rational principle. For if freedom of speech actually entailed the impossibility of communicating thought by speech, because hecklers could continually interrupt the speaker, respect for rationality—for the value of communicating thought—would then require the denial of the freedom of speech.
Such a vicious absurdity arises only on the basis of the anarchic concept of freedom. It does not arise on the basis of the rational concept of freedom. Freedom of speech rationally means that the lecturer or invited speaker has the right to speak and that hecklers and disrupters are violating the freedom of speech. The rational concept of freedom establishes freedom of speech precisely as the safeguard of the communication of thought, not its enemy. It is vital to keep this principle in mind today in an environment in which many university campuses have been transformed into virtual zoos, in which cowardly and ignorant administrators regularly tolerate disruptions of speech by gangs of delinquents masquerading as students. Such university administrators thereby abandon their responsibility to maintain their universities as the centers of teaching and learning that in their nature they are supposed to be. In tolerating anarchic violations of freedom of speech in the name of freedom of speech, they pave the way for the outright fascistic destruction of freedom of speech in the name of rationality.
