Wading Into the Anarchy Debate
There’s a difference between saying society’s prosperity is “the product of the state” and saying a prosperous civilization requires the existence of a state.
A thoughtful discussion recently arose between FEE Hazlitt fellows on an interesting question: would the ideal society have a minimal state or no state at all?
Jack Nicastro makes the minarchist case, arguing that anarchy is neither practical nor conducive to peace. He cites Objectivist Ayn Rand’s argument that a state should exist, but it should exist with a specific purpose: to protect individual rights.
“If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door… Peaceful coexistence is impossible if a man has to live under the constant threat of force to be unleashed against him by any of his neighbors at any moment.”
Rand is one of the all-time great defenders of capitalism, and credited as the source of modern history’s unprecedented wealth creation. But she believed that a flourishing capitalist society required “a social environment…conducive to [men’s] successful survival,” and a state is part of this equation.
Jack agrees.
“Throwing the baby of society, division of labor, and modernity out with the bathwater of immoral actions of criminal men and tyrannical government is not the answer,” he writes.
Antón Chamberlin makes the anarchist case here, and in it he takes specific aim at Jack’s bathwater argument.
“If [Jack] is saying the following, I reject it. I reject the idea that society, the division of labor, and modernity itself are the product of the state. Theoretically, the state is necessarily a parasite to society, and historically, both civilization and the division of labor predate any absolute state.”
I think the issue here is one semantics. Antón rejects the idea that the economic triumphs of collapse are “the product of the state.” I agree with this statement, and I suspect Rand would as well (as would Jack, I imagine).
Antón is also correct in my opinion that the state is by nature parasitic. Again, I think Rand would also agree. (It’s perhaps the most prominent theme of Atlas Shrugged, which depicts a bunch of people inside and outside of government to loot the riches of wealth creators for selfish gain.)
My point is a simple one: There’s a difference between saying society’s prosperity is “the product of the state” and saying a prosperous civilization requires the existence of a state to allow productive members of society to, in Rand’s words, “live together in a peaceful, productive, rational society.”
I can elaborate further if necessary and offer helpful examples to illustrate my point , but I’ll refrain from doing so for the time being, since I expect Antón will concede there is a difference, and we can take the discussion up from here.