Archives: February 2004

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Epicurus: Egoist Anarchist?

Concerning my post on Egoism and Anarchy, Peter Saint-Andre writes:

Roderick Long argues that classical eudaimonism provides a key to reconciling the egoistic and natural-rights justifications for a voluntary society, since eudaimonism holds that justice is part of human flourishing. Long adduces Socrates as the originator, and Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics as early developers, of the eudaimonist tradition; he also notes that eudaimonist views on the content of justice are quite foreign to the theories of justice inherent in individualist anarchism. It’s interesting to me that he left Epicurus off the list of eudaimonist thinkers, because certain Epicurean positions seem to present an approach to justice that is much closer to individualist anarchism.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Jesus?

Thanks to everyone who wrote me concerning my column God So Loved the World that He Did What?. Several readers expressed surprise at my claim that the doctrine I was criticising is “nowhere to be found in the Bible.” Some pointed to John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

The doctrine I was criticising assumes, first, that Jesus is God, and second, that the point of Jesus’ crucifixion was to rescue people from being sent to hell by God. Neither of these claims occurs in John 3:16.

I’ve argued below that nowhere in the Gospels is Jesus proclaimed to be God. As for hell, I see no good reason to suppose that the eternal salvation that Jesus offers is life in an otherworldly future or escape from a literal hell. Remember that Jesus is constantly speaking metaphorically and being interpreted literally: when he speaks of being “born again,” he is asked “How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” (John 3:3-4); and when Jesus says “I have meat to eat that ye know not of,” his literal-minded disciples wonder, “Hath any man brought him aught to eat?” and he has to explain “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me.” (John 4:32-34) There’s every reason to take his talk of a future judgment metaphorically also; for he also makes clear that divine Sonship, the status he offers to all, is not a future event to be awaited but an immediately available atemporal reality: “Before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58) (Incidentally, this passage can hardly be taken as claiming that Jesus is God, since a mere four lines earlier he says “If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth me.”)

Jesus clearly tries to avert a literalist interpretation of salvation when he reminds his disciples: “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21) Or likewise, from the non-canonical (but not necessarily inauthentic) Gospels:

“If your leaders say to you, Lo, the kingdom is in the sky, then the birds of the sky will precede you; if they say to you, It is in the sea, then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and around you.” (Thomas 3)

“There is no sin, but it is you who make sin when you do the things that are like the nature of adultery, which is called sin. That is why the Good came into your midst, to the essence of every nature, in order to restore it to its root.” (Mary 4:26-27)

“What you are looking forward to has come, but you do not know it.” (Thomas 51)

“The kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.” (Thomas 113)

“What are the ‘glad tidings’? True life, eternal life, has been found – it is not promised, it is here, it is in you: as a living in love, in love without subtraction and exclusion, without regard for station. Everyone is the child of God – Jesus definitely presumes nothing for himself alone – and as a child of God everyone is equal to everyone. ... If I understand anything about this great symbolist, it is that he accepted only inner realities as realities, as “truths” – that he understood the rest, everything natural, temporal, spatial, historical, only as signs, as occasions for parables. The concept of “the son of man” is not a concrete person who belongs in history, something individual and unique, but an “eternal” factuality, a psychological symbol redeemed from the concept of time. ... The “kingdom of God” is nothing that one expects; it has no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it will not come in “a thousand years” – it is an experience of the heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere.”

Why Jesus Is Not God

Was Jesus God incarnate? There’s a popular argument floating around the web these days that purports to prove that he must have been – an argument that unfortunately seems to have originated with C. S. Lewis, a theologian for whose philosophical abilities I ordinarily have a great deal of respect.

There are different versions of the argument, but they all run more or less as follows:

1. Jesus claimed to be God.
2. Anyone who claims to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God.
3. Jesus was neither a liar nor a lunatic.
4. Therefore, Jesus is God.

“But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:12-13)

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. ... And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.” (Romans 8:14-17)

“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him.” (1 John 3:2)

Egoism and Anarchy

During the late 1880s, a fierce debate broke out in the pages of the libertarian periodical Liberty over egoistic versus natural-rights approaches to anarchism. (The various contributions to this debate will eventually be available in the Molinari Institute’s online library; in the meantime, for details see Frank H. Brooks’ The Individualist Anarchists: An Anthology of Liberty (1881-1908) or Wendy McElroy’s The Debates of Liberty: An Overview of Individualist Anarchism, 1881-1908.)

The egoists argued that there could be no rational grounds for any person to recognise any authority above her own reason or to place any goal before her own happiness. Hence they rejected “morality” as metaphysical mumbo-jumbo, concluding that no one has any reason to accept any principles of conduct, anarchist or otherwise, except insofar as accepting those principles is strategically effective in promoting one’s own interests. The consistent anarchist, they insisted, should accept no unchosen constraints, moral or political, on her own sovereign will.

The natural-rights proponents argued that respect for the inviolability of other people’s rights is a sine qua non of anarchism. Even if the egoist respects anarchist boundaries in practice – something of which the natural-rightsers felt none too confident – she must nonetheless reserve in principle an entitlement to impose her will on others should she judge doing so to be in her own interest. Hence the egoist must regard others’ freedom as a revocable gift from herself to them, rather than an inherent right; but this is to take the attitude of a ruler to her subjects, not of an anarchist to her peers. The consistent anarchist, the natural-rightsers argued, must reject egoism in favour of a universal and binding moral law.

I’ve long held that Greek philosophy and modern libertarianism are natural allies, tailor-made for each other – not because they are similar but because through their very differences each can supply the deficiencies of the other. This debate in Liberty is another example. Both sides of this debate shared a common assumption: that respect for others’ rights is not itself a component of our self-interest. From this assumption it follows that one must choose between putting one’s own interests first and regarding other people’s rights as having intrinsic weight. But this is precisely what is challenged by Classical Eudaimonism, the moral theory pioneered by Socrates, developed in different ways by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, and accepted by nearly every major moral philosopher before the Renaissance, including Cicero and Thomas Aquinas.

According to Classical Eudaimonism, self-interest is indeed the ultimate criterion of right action, but our true self-interest is to live a life of objective human flourishing. Acting in accordance with the virtue of justice is not a mere external means to such flourishing, it is part of that flourishing; hence self-interest properly understood requires that we place value – and not merely strategic value either – on behaving justly toward others. Hence the Classical Eudaimonist can happily embrace both the egoist’s insistence of the paramount supremacy of self-concern and the natural-rightser’s insistence on the sacred authority of justice.

I may be asked: “Well, it’s nice that Classical Eudaimonism can reconcile the two sides of this debate, but why should we believe that Classical Eudaimonism is true?” My answer is that the fact that Classical Eudaimonism can reconcile the two sides of the Liberty debate is itself an extremely good reason for thinking it’s true. (In saying this I’m relying on a Greek-style coherentist moral epistemology that I won’t spend time defending here; but see my article The Basis of Natural Law, my book Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand, and my review of Leland Yeager’s Ethics As Social Science.)

Of course, the Classical Eudaimonists’ views on the content of justice generally bore little resemblance to individualist anarchism. But that’s why the ideas of the Greek philosophers require as much correction from libertarian ideas as libertarian ideas require correction from the Greeks. Symbiosis, man.

God So Loved the World that He Did What?

Suppose I confront you, with a gun in one hand and a hammer in the other. I point the gun at you, and I tell you sadly, “I have to shoot you unless I bang myself on the head with this hammer. It’s the rule.”

“Whose rule is this?” you ask as you edge toward the exit.

“It’s my rule,” I explain. “I made this rule all by myself. But don’t worry; I’m not going to shoot you, because I love you.”

And then I bang myself on the head, really hard, with the hammer.

You start to run away, but I tackle you. “Look at me!” I yell. “I’m bleeding! My skull is cracked!! Look at the suffering I’ve put myself through for your sake!!! You really owe me now. You’ll be an ungrateful wretch unless you start doing exactly what I say.”

Such a demand would obviously make no sense. But how is the predominant Christian interpretation of the crucifixion of Jesus any different?

Mainstream Christians hold that Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross to save us from hell. But they also maintain that Jesus is God incarnate. So who made the rule that we would all be damned to hell unless God got himself nailed to a cross? God did.

If this were true, wouldn’t it make Jesus’ “sacrifice” meaningless?

This bizarre doctrine, which casts God in the role of a sado-masochistic psycho, is believed by millions of people, and is the central theme of that movie everyone’s talking about. Yet it’s nowhere to be found in the Bible. (Not that the doctrine would be worthy of belief if it were – but anyway it’s not.)

Strange planet, eh?

Shades of Green

Several libertarian readers have written to me expressing incredulity and horror at my kind words for environmentalism in my February 13th post. Environmentalists, I was told, are enemies of civilisation itself, and the environmental movement is nothing more than a plot to impose statist tyranny on us all.

I certainly agree that most environmentalists favour oppressive statist solutions to the problems they address; but so what? Most people of any sort favour oppressive statist solution to the problems that concern them; that’s what it means to say that libertarianism is a minority viewpoint. One needn’t endorse environmentalists’ favourite solutions to agree that many of the problems they cite are genuine. (I said many, not all.)

It’s also true that the environmentalist movement includes a number of people who are quite properly classified as enemies of civilisation. But they hardly constitute the majority of environmentalists.

In any case, there are quite a few libertarian-friendly environmentalists. Historically, Thoreau is an obvious example. Today I would name the folks at PERC, specialising in the economic aspects, and Gus diZerega, specialising in the spiritual aspects. (For some of the commonalties between environmentalism and the Hayekian view of markets see diZerega here.) I don’t always agree with everything they say, but they are obviously on the side of the good guys.

I may be told that these people can’t be real environmentalists, because they’re not anti-liberty. I note that the argument is circular.

Wolf Fight

My latest exchange on Liberty & Power concerns this story by Naomi Wolf. The links follow:

Gene Healy: Wolf and Wolf

Roderick Long: Wolf Redux

Gene Healy: Iron-Jawed Angel or Shrinking Violet?

Roderick Long: Angel Redux

Gene Healy: Yet More Wolf

Roderick Long: Even More Wolf

Gus diZerega: Wolf’s Article

Constant on Blowback

[cross-posted on Liberty & Power]

Nearly two centuries before the September 11th attacks, French liberal author Benjamin Constant issued the following prophetic warning:

The force that a people needs to keep all others in subjection is today, more than ever, a privilege that cannot last. The nation that aimed at such an empire would place itself in a more dangerous position than the weakest of tribes. It would become the object of universal horror. Every opinion, every desire, every hatred, would threaten it, and sooner or later those hatreds, those opinions, and those desires would explode and engulf it.

There would certainly be something unjust in turning such fury against an entire people. An entire country is never guilty of the excesses that its leader makes it commit. ... But the nations that are the victims of its deplorable obedience, will not be prepared to acknowledge its secret feelings, feelings that its conduct belies. They will reproach the instruments for the crimes of the hand that directs them.

– The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation (1813)

To Vote Or Not To Vote

Should libertarians vote? If so, for whom? I recently participated in an exchange on this topic on Liberty & Power. Check out the links below:

David Beito: John Edwards Makes Even Kerry Look Good on Iraq, Long on Russo

Pat Lynch: The Vote Question

Roderick Long: A Vote Answer

David Beito: Voting as Self-Defense: The Case of Black Disfranchisement

Roderick Long: Vote Note

Pat Lynch: Voting ReDeux

The Fell Clutch Tightens

The following letter appeared in this morning’s Opelika-Auburn News.

To the Editor:

Perhaps I shouldn’t bother complaining that Rudy Tidwell insults the author of the heroic and inspiring poem “Invictus” by calling it an expression of “the essence of sin.”

After all, Mr. Tidwell’s entire column today was a sustained series of insults against everyone who disagrees with his religious views. When someone is willing to describe his living neighbours – be they Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, or atheists – as being “in a worse condition than an imbecile,” simply because they follow a different faith or no faith, one can hardly expect courtesy toward the dead.

I will point out, however, that Mr. Tidwell commits a factual error in attributing the poem’s authorship to someone named “Bruce Hamilton.”

While the poem was dedicated to Hamilton Bruce (not Bruce Hamilton), it was written by William Ernest Henley (1849-1903) – a man who demonstrated enormous personal courage in the face of incredible suffering, and who deserves our admiration, not our mockery.

Roderick T. Long

En Passant

Back in 1999 Samuel Goldwyn Films was listing Ayn Rand’s unproduced screenplay Red Pawn as a film “in the works.” Nothing has been heard since; but today I came across a tiny tidbit of information: a profile of Russian director Sergei Bodrov notes that in 1997 – two years before anyone in the Objectivist community seems to have heard about this – Bodrov was working for Goldwyn “as a writer” on Red Pawn. (In other words, Rand’s script was being rewritten.)

Okay, I didn’t promise it was big exciting news.

The Way It Wasn’t

I don’t know how far Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ film “is as it was,” but I’ve already noticed a couple of dubious details in the TV ad.

First: When Pilate displays Jesus to the crowd, he cries, “ecce homo!” (Latin for “behold the man!”). But he pronounces the word “ecce” not as an ancient Roman would, “eck-ay,” but as a medieval Catholic would, “etch-ay.” (I know Gibson, who opposes the Vatican II reforms, is a big fan of ecclesiastical Latin; but shouldn’t an imperial Roman official speak classical Latin?)

Second: When Jesus is being crucified, we see a hand (supposedly Gibson’s own) preparing to hammer a nail into Jesus’ palm. In real life the Romans crucified their victims by driving nails through the wrists – not through the palms, which could not adequately support the body’s weight.

Neither of these lapses is a big deal in its own right; but in the context of a movie that has been trumpeted for its historical and linguistic accuracy, they don’t inspire confidence.

Missing Mars Rover Surfaces in Loch Ness!

Another random assemblage of trivia:

Thanks to a tip from one of my students, I’ve just discovered a fantastic site: Non-Contradiction.com. It’s filled with information about, works by, and t-shirts celebrating my favourite Athenian metic. Also makes hundreds of gyros!

The Man Who Would Be President

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Aaron Russo, the current frontrunner for U.S. Libertarian Party presidential candidate nominee, spoke at Auburn University tonight. I went to listen.

Since 1972 the LP has run seven candidates for president, of whom I’ve met four. If Russo wins the nomination, he’ll be the fifth. Here are some first impressions:

Russo’s campaign, should he be nominated, will be very different from that of Harry Browne, the LP’s candidate for the last two presidential elections. Where Browne focused on the economic case for liberty, Russo focuses on the moral case. (My ideal candidate would focus equally on both, but she’s not running.) Browne’s delivery was always polished, professional, and dignified – presidential, in fact – while Russo is more rough-hewn, with a rambling, inflammatory, and self-dramatising style that I initially found off-putting, though I warmed to him considerably by the time the session was over. I was particularly pleased that he seemed like someone that left-wingers and right-wingers could equally relate to.

Judging on presentational style alone, however, I think the press would find Russo easier than Browne to justify not taking seriously; and given his rights-focused approach, I also wasn’t able to judge how well prepared Russo is to handle the hard questions about economic policy. On the other hand, Russo’s colourful personal style, along with his status as a nationally prominent Hollywood producer, could work to his advantage with the press. Russo also said that he plans to draw on his own considerable financial assets to raise the profile of his campaign, though he declined to offer a ballpark figure.

Where does Russo stand on issues that divide libertarians? Some answers that emerged:

An Audience of Myriads

In a Blog’s Stead has now well surpassed 20,000 page views since its inception! This is based on 13,117 page views for praxeology.net/unblog.htm, 5824 page views for www.praxeology.net/unblog.htm, 483 page views for this month’s permalinked version, and 921 page views for last month’s.

Anarchism as Constitutionalism, Part 3

Bidinotto-Long Debate on Anarchism: Previous Installments
Bidinotto: The Contradiction in Anarchism Long: Anarchism as Constitutionalism, Part 1 Bidinotto: Contra Anarchism, Part I Long: Anarchism as Constitutionalism, Part 2 Bidinotto: Contra Anarchism, Part II Bidinotto: Contra Anarchism, Part III Bidinotto: The Goal of Law: Justice or “Utility”?

Welcome to my LONGEST BLOG ENTRY EVER! It’s been about a month and a half since my last contribution to the anarchism debate; Mr. Bidinotto has added several installments since then, so it’s time for me to play catch-up. I’ll quote each of his recent installments in full (as he previously requested), following each by my response


Reply to Contra Anarchism, Part II

In Contra Anarchism, Part II, Mr. Bidinotto writes:

If you read closely Professor Roderick Long’s new response to my previous blog entry, “Contra Anarchism,” you’ll find that he concedes my central claim about anarchism’s rejection, on principle, of any “final arbiter” of disputes.

Long defines a “final arbiter” as “an agency that refuses to submit its use of force to external adjudication,” and which thus “is by definition lawless...” In effect, this means that anarchism equates legal finality with coercive monopoly. Thus, in rejecting the latter, anarchists must reject the former.

There’s a tacit contradiction within Long’s definition, however. “External adjudication” implies some judgment, and some standard for rendering it. So, just who is to supply such “external adjudication” to the actions of anarchism’s many “competing market agencies” – and make that judgment stick – if not some “final arbiter” holding coercive legal power?

Or are we instead to have an infinite regress of competing arbiters and market-driven legal codes, never to reach any final, enforceable resolution? Apparently so. In this respect, anarchism seems to be an invention not so much of noted anti-state theorists, such as Gustave de Molinari or Murray Rothbard, but rather of the ancient philosopher Zeno, who specialized in concocting theoretical paradoxes and infinite regresses that defied all common sense.

Standing at the precipice of this bottomless regress, Long hastily tries to step back. My analysis, he claims, “rests on a misunderstanding of Market Anarchism. [Bidinotto] apparently believes that, under Market Anarchism, no one may be subjected to any legal procedure to which she has not consented. I agree that this would probably be an absurd and unworkable system.” Long insists that “...under anarchy there is no ‘unlimited right to secede’ from just legal arrangements; one has instead a limited right to secede, i.e., a right to secede so long as he refrains from behaving in rights-violating ways.” [emphasis in original]

But this, of course, begs the central question that I had raised against his position: Under anarchism, who would have the final authority to decide what is a violation of rights?

This question-begging becomes even clearer in this passage: “A Market Anarchist can certainly think that some rights-claims are correct and others are mistaken, and that agencies acting on correct views have the moral right to defend their clients, by force if necessary, against agencies acting on mistaken views. In that sense, Market Anarchists have no objection to the idea that actions based on correct views of justice have a right to a monopoly against actions based on a mistaken view of justice." [emphasis in original]

Consider what this means. Long is postulating competing agencies of force – all operating under different legal codes that codify often-clashing value-systems, and each claiming “the moral right to defend their clients, by force if necessary, against agencies acting on mistaken views.” Yet their combat is to occur in the absence of any “final arbiter” which, according to him, “is by definition lawless.” (!)

Long acknowledges this thorny little dilemma. “Of course, as Mr. Bidinotto will be quick to point out, in any society there will inevitably be disagreements as to what counts as a ‘rights-violating way.’”

Yes, Mr. Bidinotto is indeed quick to point this out. But Long tries simply to evade his dilemma in this way: “The administrators of the legal system, whether that system is anarchic or minarchic (sic), will periodically disagree as to what rights people have.”

But is this parallel truly valid? Note that he speaks of “the legal system.” What “legal system”? My whole point was that under anarchism, there would not be “the legal system”: there would be a plethora of competing systems, and legal interpreters, and enforcement mechanisms and agents, none having any right to have the final say.

Consider this essential difference. Under a constitutionally limited government, a codified legal arrangement exists to resolve disputes and to enforce their final resolutions, even against dissenters. But under anarchism, no agency’s verdict could ever be rendered with finality, or be enforced, because to anarchists, such an agency would constitute a “coercive monopoly” that “forcibly excludes competitors.”

Dr. Long says that he knows of no Market Anarchist who advocates such a view as I have described. Yet one of the intellectual godfathers of modern anarchism, the late Roy Childs, used this very line of argument in his seminal writings in rejecting such “coercive” state powers as arrest and subpoena.

Unlike Childs, who had the good sense to later recant, contemporary anarchists refuse to acknowledge this logical dilemma. Long, for example, quickly tries to change the subject to the “practical” argument. “The question is: under which social arrangement, anarchy or minarchy (sic), will these disputes be most likely to be resolved peacefully and in a manner favourable to individual liberty?”

With clashing interest groups (religious, political, familial, social, etc.) all having a desire to contract with a “protection agency” that codifies their own values – and with no single agency having the enforceable authority to say, “Your legal appeals are exhausted; this is the final verdict, and this case is now closed” – how could anyone rationally reply to Long’s question with the answer: “Anarchy”?

If Dr. Long and his anarcho-colleagues truly believe that a “‘final arbiter’... is by definition lawless,” then I wish them luck in convincing the world that a free, peaceful, and productive society can exist in the absence of one.

If, on the other hand, they truly “have no objection to the idea that actions based on correct views of justice have a right to a monopoly against actions based on a mistaken view of justice,” then what he’s describing and endorsing is not anarchism, but government – that is, a legal agency with the final authority to enforce laws.

But in logic, they simply cannot have it both ways.

As for anarchism – which I believe may now be safely defined as “that social condition arising in the absence of a final legal arbiter of disputes” – let me appropriate Dr. Long’s words: “I agree that this would probably be an absurd and unworkable system.”

In light of comments received (and criticisms posted elsewhere) following my previous posts on anarchism, I've concluded that getting most anarchists to actually confront my arguments is as easy as handcuffing oatmeal.

I found it particularly fascinating when, in response to my challenge concerning the inherent moral contradiction within their theory, some anarchists suddenly switched their argument to: “Oh, but government is far worse!” (Writes one: “What I find striking is almost every criticism minarchists hurl against anarchy, applies also to minarchy.” Writes another: “Can you seriously believe that private initiation of force would be worse the government initiation of force?”)

Let me give this one more try. I'll use little words and short sentences, focusing on only the central moral issue, and numbering my points – just so that there will be even less excuse for misunderstanding.

The fundamental moral rationale for anarchism is that government inherently entails aggression (the initiation of force), while anarchism does not. On this contention, the anarchists’ entire theoretical case against government hinges.

Specifically, their moral claims are that (1) government must compel involuntary taxation to sustain its activities, (2) government initiates force and coercion to outlaw “competing” protection agencies and legal systems, and (3) anarcho-capitalism avoids both moral problems.

Here, very briefly, are my summary replies:

(1) There is no inherent reason why a government that’s limited only to bare-bones justice functions will require taxation to exist. The necessary services of a proper government – police, laws, courts, even defense – could be funded voluntarily, generally on a fee-for-service basis, along with (but not limited to) such supplemental non-coercive mechanisms as lotteries, special fund-raisers, and employment of volunteers.

(2) Governments do not need to outlaw “private protection agencies” – and in actuality, they don’t. We already have an abundance of private detectives, bounty hunters, security police, mediators, arbitrators, bodyguards, private prisons, etc., all operating legally and in parallel to the governmental system.

However, government does require that all such individuals and agencies conform to, and operate within, a single, overarching framework of law. Why? Because you can’t allow “market competition” over the very definitions and meanings of such basic legal principles as “justice,” “rights,” “aggression,” “self-defense,” etc.

You can’t have a viable, peaceful society with each competing individual, demographic group, street gang, religious faction, et al., deciding, unilaterally and subjectively, who is a “victim” and who a “criminal” – then claiming the “sovereign right” to ignore the contrary legal claims, rules, definitions, principles, and verdicts of everyone else.

And that brings us to...

(3) Contrary to its supporters, anarcho-capitalism embodies an inherent moral and logical contradiction.

Most of the saner anarchist theorists contend that a “just” agency (or even an innocent victim) has the right to forcibly respond to an “aggressor.” But in the marketplace, which is governed solely by profit incentives, who will define who is the “aggressor” and who the “victim”? Which “private defense agency” has the final authority to enforce its definitions against those used by other competing agencies – or against individual “hold outs” who disagree – or against all those who proclaim a “sovereign right” to “secede” from that agency’s determination?

When push comes to shove – as it often will, anarcho-fantasies to the contrary notwithstanding – the “private defense agency” faces a basic choice. Either (a) it uses coercion to enforce its verdict upon the “hold out” (or upon “competing agencies”), or (b) it fails to enforce its verdicts.

If (a), then the “private defense agency” is coercively “eliminating the competition” – that is, it's behaving as a “legal monopoly on force,” in exactly the same way that anarchists find morally intolerable when a government is doing it. In that case, the argument for the moral superiority (let alone moral purity) of anarchism’s “private defense agency” collapses.

If (b), however, then the agency’s pronouncements are toothless and impotent. In that case, all that anyone need do to evade the private agency’s criminal laws, verdicts, and sentences, is simply to ignore them.

Since many anarchists have tried gamely to ignore this key point, let me make it harder for them by repeating it.

Folks, it’s really either/or. Either “private defense agencies” enforce their laws, or they don’t.

If they do enforce their laws, then (by anarcho-definitions) they're “coercively” imposing their private legal systems on their competitors. And there goes their claim to morality.

But if they don't enforce their laws, then criminals will remain free to prey with impunity upon innocent individuals. And there goes the neighborhood.

Anarchists simply cannot tap dance around this dilemma by such subterfuges and dodges as claiming, “Oh, but governments would be far worse than private agencies” – or “Historically, limited governments never remain ‘limited’.”

Again, the moral case for anarchism is not that it is less bad than government, or that governments historically have not acted properly. The core anarchist claim is that anarchism is inherently non-aggressive, while government is inherently aggressive.

But both aspects of this claim are utterly and completely false.

There is nothing “immoral” or “aggressive” about an institution having the final authority to render and enforce just verdicts, according to objective procedures and rules of evidence. The fact that verdicts – by their very nature as final legal decisions – must be enforced against “outlaws,” is not aggression, but defense: the organized social defense of the rights of innocent individuals against their victimizers. And the fact that final enforcement of legally rendered verdicts necessarily precludes further “competition,” or “secession” by dissenters, is not aggression, either: it’s simply recognition of reality. After all, an unenforced rule is not a law, but merely a suggestion.

Experience tells us that criminals do not respond to mere suggestions.

And experience also tells us (at least those of us not mired in rationalistic theorizing) that to protect individual rights, society needs a single agency that retains the ultimate, final power to enforce justice for all.

Why are there no triangular credit cards? The reason is not government regulation, but rather that – given our current system that relies on rectangular cards – no one would accept it (unless the government made them accept it, thus preventing the market drive toward uniformity). Similar reasons explain why the market no longer carries both VHS and Betamax video cartridges, but only VHS; the market creates uniformity when customers need it, and diversity when they need that instead. It’s a good thing that video cassettes come with lots of different kinds of movies, and so the market ensures this; it would be a bad thing if video cassettes came in fifty different shapes and sizes, and so the market prevents this.

The core purposes of government are well expressed in the Preamble to the U. S. Constitution: to “establish justice” and to “insure domestic tranquility.”

But there's a hierarchy of importance here. By seeking justice, you will necessarily promote domestic tranquility. However, if you seek domestic tranquility alone you won't necessarily promote justice.

How, then, to address crime? Liberals emphasize prevention and rehabilitation. Conservatives, and many free marketers, emphasize deterrence and incapacitation (jail). But all share a utilitarian objective: to advance future public safety by altering the future behavior of the criminal. The problem is that utilitarian objectives can be sought without concern for justice.

For decades, liberals have run our legal system. Renouncing punishment as a proper response to an offender’s past crimes, their prevention-and-rehabilitation approach has tried instead to alter his future conduct, for the eventual betterment of society as a whole.

This anti-punitive strategy has obliterated personal responsibility. The felon endures few negative consequences for the damage he does to others. This has led to dual outrages: the unjust neglect of victims, and excessive leniency toward their victimizers.

But under utilitarianism, leniency is not the only option. If public safety is the sole objective, why not try to suppress crime rates by executing – or jailing forever-- every criminal we catch, from jaywalkers to serial killers? Instead of inordinate leniency, why not try unbridled punitivity?

Many conservatives and some free marketers prefer this alternative. Their deterrence-and-incapacitation approach represents the flip side of the same utilitarian coin. It, too, aims solely to alter an offender’s future conduct, for the eventual betterment of society as a whole. It, too, severs any clear causal connection between the degree of injury suffered by the innocent, and the degree of punishment imposed on the perpetrator.

Utilitarianism thus has led both the Left and Right to injustice: to disproportionate punishment in relation to the transgression. After all, once illegal acts are de-coupled from a proportionate legal response, the only remaining argument is whether that response should be anemic or draconian.

Utilitarianism also leads both sides to collectivism. What counts to utilitarians, Left or Right, is not justice for individuals, but only lower crime rates for society in general. No longer gauged by the harm inflicted upon individual victims, punishments are instead based on arbitrary predictions of the criminal’s future dangerousness to “society.” In utilitarian social calculations, there is no place for the anguished human face of an individual crime victim. He or she sinks into a sea of faceless, collective crime statistics.

Do not misunderstand: prevention, rehabilitation, deterrence, and incapacitation are worthwhile ancillary objectives of the criminal law. But they are not primary objectives. They address only general social conditions, so that anonymous citizens of tomorrow may not turn to crime. None of them, though, need be grounded in the principle of making punishments fit past crimes. None of them need be rooted in justice.

The alternative to utilitarianism? A legal system that aims primarily at exacting retribution.

Retribution means administering punishment to a criminal in proportion to how much he has hurt others. I use “retribution” to mean “reflection.” The crook’s basic aim is to gain by force something at the expense of someone else. His actions impose damages upon an innocent person. The fundamental goal of a strategy of moral retribution, then, is to reflect those damages back onto the criminal himself.

This policy is both moral and practical. Moral, because it upholds innocent human life, and the just social framework upon which individual survival and well-being depend. Practical, because a policy of reflecting proportionate losses back upon the culprit frustrates and negates his desire, which is to profit at someone else's expense. Retribution means he won’t get away with it.

A retributive system would, in fact, incorporate many of the worthy crime-reduction ambitions of the utilitarian. For example, long terms of confinement under harsh conditions, with inmates forced to work and pay restitution to victims and taxpayers, would surely deter more criminals than does our current toothless system. Being locked up would also prevent them from causing ordinary citizens more trouble, and – who knows? – possibly encourage the occasional inmate to rehabilitate himself.

But since we cannot predict a person’s future dangerousness, a retributive system would abandon such utilitarian fads as “treatment programs” and “selective incapacitation.” A term of confinement would be tied to the seriousness of a convict's offenses – period.

Because retribution entails punishment, it is often criticized as being motivated by a crude thirst for revenge. In fact, a retributive legal system is the antithesis of private revenge, and the basis for the rule of law.

My dictionary says “revenge” is “the carrying out of a bitter desire to injure another for a wrong done to oneself or to those who seem a part of oneself.” Of course, revenge-based punishment need not be just: the injured party may retaliate disproportionately to the harm done. By contrast, “retribution” is “just or deserved punishment, often without personal motives, for some evil done.”

If we are to have a just and peaceful society, the use of after-the-fact, retaliatory force cannot be left to the arbitrary whims of private victims, each employing subjective criteria of personal injury.

This, incidentally, is a central fallacy of anarchism (aka “anarcho-capitalism,” aka “market anarchism”), which theory assumes that individuals retain a “right” to exercise retaliatory force on their own behalf – or to hire some market-driven “private protection agency” to do so.

But market competition, so appropriate for producing widgets, is not an appropriate mechanism for exercising coercion. Precisely to minimize and avoid vengeance, vindictiveness, and vendettas, and the disproportionate punishments to which they lead, a justice system must be based upon retribution, not revenge. And to enforce such distinctions, government is necessary: a constitutionally limited legal arbiter, operating under clear, objective laws, with the ultimate power to distinguish victims from victimizers, aggression from self-defense – and to enforce its verdicts against wrongdoers.

Retribution constitutes the premise that the level of punishment must fit the severity of the crime. This does not mean we need to punish in kind: the law need not literally demand “an eye for an eye,” sinking to the specific tactics of the wrongdoer. But it does mean that society should punish in proportion: the law ought to recognize gradations of evil and injury, and respond accordingly.

This brings us to the issue of “restitution” – the idea of compelling a criminal to “restore” his victim through financial compensation. At first glance, the principle of making the criminal pay his victim seems clearly linked to the idea of justice. And obviously, restitution could and should be incorporated within a retribution-based justice system, as part of the range of consequences to be imposed upon the criminal.

But some theorists – notably libertarian “market anarchists,” led by economist Bruce Benson – would substitute restitution for retribution. Benson explicitly rejects my call for a legal system based on the principle of proportionate, retributive justice. He argues that a privately-enforced system of restitution would be a superior alternative to any governmental system that endeavors to impose proportionate punishments on criminals.

It is easy to see why such a theory would appeal to anarchists, and why they continue to invest so much effort promoting it. Crime control and national defense constitute the two core rationales for the existence of government. So if anarchists can demonstrate that these two activities can be effectively “privatized,” the case for government collapses.

Thus they argue that we should do away with our current criminal justice apparatus, and end the “waste” caused by its “punitive focus.” By employing criminals in privately supplied jobs, and attaching their earnings in order to pay back their victims, we could shut down many costly, unnecessary prisons. Criminals themselves would, through their labors, finance their own upkeep, as well as meet their restitution obligations. This arrangement would also spare taxpayers the injustice of having to support both the government's expensive incarceration apparatus, and the care and feeding of millions of social predators.

On its face, this notion appeals seductively to our sense of frugality and justice. But it is an illusion. In fact, from an economic standpoint, “market anarchists” are prepared simply to write off most of the social costs of crime – and forego most of the expense of apprehending, trying, and extracting restitution from criminals. And from the moral standpoint, they are equally prepared to write off the quest for justice itself.

The reason is obvious. “Market anarchists” wish to privatize all governmental functions, including crime control. In effect, they wish to erase the boundaries between law and economics. However, they know that the pursuit of proportionate justice cannot be done economically. Retribution is not an economic good – there is no profit in it – and to pursue it would require an agency that is not limited by the need to seek or show a profit. In other words, a government.

A single “thought experiment” will illustrate why.

Not long ago – after a murder spree in the Pacific Northwest that lasted decades, and involved the deaths of at least four dozen women – the so-called “Green River Killer” was finally captured, prosecuted, and incarcerated. This episode was incalculably costly: for the victims, for their families and friends, for taxpayers, and for all those millions of women who lived in fear for years and had to take expensive self-protective measures. The manhunt and prosecution alone tied up the time and resources of hundreds of law enforcement officials for many years; the lifetime incarceration of the convicted killer will cost taxpayers even more.

Most of the victims of this sociopath were prostitutes. Because of their social stigma, prostitutes are favorite targets of serial killers: few people care enough to pay attention to the fate of hookers. The same is true of homeless people, eccentric loners, and runaways. People lacking social ties are easier to target and abuse without public outcry. And when murdered, they lack family and friends who might bother to seek justice for them (or “restitution” for themselves). Such forgotten, marginalized individuals also typically lack the means to afford the kind of “private protections” enjoyed by those in better financial circumstances.

So to “market anarchists” – who wish to end all governmental involvement in crime control, and to rely instead solely on private financial restitution – a few questions:

1. What economic incentive or profit would there be for any “private protection agency” to invest vast amounts of time, money, manpower, and other resources in order to investigate, capture, and convict someone like the Green River Killer?

2. Given the social and economic status of his victims, what economic incentive or profit would there be for any “private protection agency” to try to protect them?

3. And even if captured by some private agency, how could the killer ever “pay back” his gargantuan “debts” – and to whom – and in what amounts?

In fact, solely on economic grounds, the relentless and enormously expensive pursuit of this mass murderer made no sense. But on moral grounds, to allow his killing spree to continue was intolerable.

So what happens to society under a “legal system” in which all moral considerations are reduced to the bottom line on a quarterly balance sheet?

(Ironically, these libertarians ignore the views of one of libertarianism’s greatest theorists, economist Ludwig von Mises. In his book Bureaucracy, Mises clearly explains the differences between governmental and economic functions – and why the two cannot be conflated. Yet some, who have appropriated Mises’ own name to vicariously lend stature to their activities, appear to selectively ignore those of his teachings which do not comport with their anarchist ravings.)

Benson pretends to endorse the concept of “justice” in his restitution scheme, which would allow the victim to decide when he has been adequately “restored.” “Full restoration arises when the victim is satisfied, not when his measurable costs have been paid,” he argues. [His emphasis]

Just how would this work in practice? “In essence, potential victims are expected to trade for (a) the right to fair (perhaps proportional) restitution and (b) support in the pursuit of justice, in exchange for promises to: (a) forgo proportional punishment if fair restitution is paid, and (b) provide similar support for others.[”] [Emphasis added]

But what, exactly, does he mean by “the pursuit of justice” if a victim is to “forgo proportional punishment”? What conceivable meaning can terms such as “fair” and “justice” have, apart from consequences to the criminal that are proportionate to the harm he does his victim? Put another way: How can a disproportionate response to crime – whether overly lenient, or overly punitive – be either fair or just?

Clearly, Benson’s use of such terms is a moral smokescreen to cover his overriding premise: utilitarianism. An economist, he is interested in creating a system not primarily for the crime victim, but “in which the interests of...others in minimizing the costs of violence comes into play.” For him, then, the quest for justice is to be subordinated to cost control.

On this point, Benson approvingly cites the ideas of anarchist economist Murray Rothbard, who saw “restitution as the price paid by the offender to persuade the victim not to exact some other form of punishment. Clearly then, the payment must be enough to satisfy the victim’s desire for retribution.” [His emphasis]

But what is “enough”? That brings us back to two glaring problems with the anarchist system: (1) the subjectivity of allowing individual victims to decide, personally and arbitrarily, the scale of criminal punishments, and (2) the sheer impossibility of meaningfully “restoring” victims of particularly harmful crimes.

In both respects, the Green River case is a perfect example of the pitiful inadequacy of the “market anarchist” approach. The prospect of meaningfully “restoring” the countless victims in this case (and in many other heinous crimes) is ludicrous. (In terms of proportionality, the only just punishment for a murderer is his own death. No, this would not “restore” anyone, since that is an impossibility. But it would reflect the consequences of murder back upon the murderer – and tell all would-be killers that the price they must pay for taking lives is the forfeiture of their own.)

One other point to be made against Benson’s proposal is its hypocrisy. Though “market anarchists” like him reject any governmental “final arbiter” of disputes as “coercive,” and for “violating rights” of unwilling participants, they display an arrogant eagerness to impose on crime victims their “private systems of conflict resolution” in exactly the same coercive way – all the while pretending that it is an entirely voluntary arrangement.

Recall that he wrote, “Full restoration arises when the victim is satisfied, not when his measurable costs have been paid.” However, Benson admits that this “creates incentives for victims to claim more damage than what was actually done,” which would encourage “hold outs” – individuals who decide that they had not been sufficiently “restored” by their victimizer. So how would his “voluntary, private restitution system” deal with such recalcitrants?

“...[I]n medieval Iceland, medieval Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England, and elsewhere, a third-party dispute resolution system has always evolved to mediate or arbitrate the victim’s claim,” he writes. “[S]tandardized rules evolved...regarding appropriate or ‘fair’ damages for specified offenses in virtually all such arrangements, and...the victim is obliged to accept what the arbitrator/mediator and/or the commonly perceived rules determine to be ‘fair’ payments for an offense. In other words, in actual restitution-based systems, institutions evolve to prevent victim hold-outs.” [Emphasis added]

But what if those ornery “victim hold-outs” defy their “voluntary, private restitution system,” and persist in seeking proportional punishment against their victimizers?

What Benson is evading is that, ultimately, those “private institutions” forced unwilling crime victims to accept whatever had been deemed to be “fair” compensation – by employing same kind of coercion for which “market anarchists” damn governments. It is no accident that the anarchists’ favorite examples of restitution-based systems are drawn from times and places collectively known by the descriptive term “feudalism.”

But unlike those governments that they self-righteously denounce as immoral, “market anarchists” – by their own admission – would make no special efforts to impose consequences on criminals proportionate to the harm they do. Again, their priority is utilitarian “cost control” – not justice.

To repeat: Wherever possible, restitution certainly should be considered as one of many mechanisms by which the law might seek justice for the victim. But restitution is but one means to achieve fairness and justice; and restitution that is not proportionate to the harm done the victim, is neither fair nor just.

As a basis for criminal law, moral retribution is the only premise fully consistent with justice and individualism. With justice – because it implements proportionality in criminal sentencing, fitting the punishment to the crime. With individualism – because it bases punishments on actual harm done to actual individuals. For retribution does not look ahead in time, attempting to reform “society” in the future: it looks backward in time, trying to set right a past injustice against an individual.

America’s Founders made it clear that they saw no clash between the moral end of justice, and the practical ends of insuring domestic tranquility. A valid conception of retribution, of “just deserts,” can incorporate and advance many of the practical purposes advanced by utilitarians.

But it can also provide those purposes the crucial moral grounding and justification that they have never had.

Dear Mr. Long,

I read your debate with Robert Bidinotto with interest. I thought you thoroughly demolished his argument in your first piece. Your insights into the true nature of a constitution are no less than brilliant and I truly appreciated your piece.

You got off base in the second one, though, and he quite rightly took you to task for it. To quote him, “if ... they truly have no objection to the idea that actions based on correct views of justice have a right to a monopoly against actions based on a mistaken view of justice, then what he’s describing and endorsing is not anarchism, but government – that is, a legal agency with the final authority to enforce laws.” And he is right.

As an anarchist, I do object to this idea. Actions based on correct views of justice do not have a right to a monopoly against actions based on a mistaken view of justice. Over time, correct views of justice will supplant incorrect views. This is healthy and demonstrates the superiority of anarchism, but it is due to the nature of the market and of human beings as acting entities, not due to any inherent right of one system of justice over another.

Until such time as the market resolves this question, both views of justice are completely equal in weight and neither has any right over the other. It is quite possible, in fact, that both views are correct. The market does not recognise the existence of a “best car” and there is no such thing as a best legal system either.

It is not important whether one legal system is superior to another, but rather which one has jurisdiction over a particular case. If a Californian and a Texan have a business dispute, the question is whether California or Texas law applies, not which body of law is superior.

Bidinotto is quite wrong. There is n