AC and power

[Kaj]

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Again, your "reference" is pointless until you accept that you can "coerce" people into doing things without using any physical force whatsoever.

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Thank you for agreeing with the ACists on that one.

[pvn]

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Sorry, by 'direct democracy' in my previous post, I am referring to a system wherein each person consents to any law concerning him/her. Not merely where each person votes or participates. That obviously changes things, should be more specific.

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And this isn't a state in any meaningful sense of the word. This is simply a set of free market interactions. If you want to call this a state, fine, it is an unobjectionable state. But this is basically the same "argument" as used by Dan and others when they say things like two people deciding on where to go eat lunch are forming a government.

[Borodog]

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States by their very definition employ violence against innocents.

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NO.

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Bolding it doesn't make it true.

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States, in practice throughout history, have employed violence against innocents.

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States by their very definition employ violence against innocents. Taxation necessitates violence and the threat of violence. If you'd like to try to redinfe this away, be my guest, but peddle it elsewhere. Since the innocent, those who have aggressed against no one's person or property, are taxed, the state employs violence against the innocent. Period.

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I think creating a society where power (in the Arendtian sense) is the primary organizing factor (rather than force) would be extremely difficult whether one used a state to do it, used markets, or used some other communal/syndicalist structure.

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I'm not sure what this has to do with anything.

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Nowhere did I endorse the state in my post. Nor did I endorse anarchism. It's assumed that if I don't want one, I want the other. Quite frankly, I'm not a big believer in either. "I hate politics and I hate the easy answers," as my favorite poet succinctly put it.

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This is like saying, "Nowhere did I endorse rape in my post. Nor did I endorse non-rape. It's assumed that if I don't want one, I want the other. Quite frankly, I'm not a big believer in either." It's a fence you can only allow yourself to straddle by defining away the violence inherent in one of the two positions.

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When an ACist accuses someone else of endorsing state violence against others, they are typically using a straw man.

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No, they aren't.

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Most statists hold one or both of the following beliefs:

1. States should not initiate force against individuals in many instances where they do so (i.e. war on drugs, etc). States overstep their legitimacy when they coerce citizens beyond their ability to protect property. (In other words, the state isn't operating efficiently, and much of the waste and coercive externalization of costs is a product not of the theory of the state, but by its flawed implementation).

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Yes, I know. This is the "The submarine is made of the wrong brand of screen doors" argument.

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2. State initiation of force in some instances is legitimate and tacit consent is given by all citizens by virtue of their participation in society. (I think this is a far less compelling position.)

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I'm glad you find it far less compelling, because it is infact ridiculous. It states that the state can do anything it bloody well likes, and that the non-emmigration of the population to Antarctica is demonstrative of their "tacit consent." It's a ridiculous argument that no one could possibly choke down unless you throw the word "state" in it, and then suddenly the government-schooled credulous lap it up with surprising gusto.

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Nobody is going to tell you that their theory of the state includes coercive, illegitimate force.

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Of course they're not. Unfortunately that doesn't mean that their theory of the state does not include coercive, illegitimate force.

[pvn]

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Nobody is going to tell you that their theory of the state includes coercive, illegitimate force.

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Of course they're not. Unfortunately that doesn't mean that their theory of the state does not include coercive, illegitimate force.

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Nah, someone around here, Arfinn, IIRC, flat-out admitted it - at least when it comes to foreign policy. I'm sure he'll tell you that domestically everything is on the up and up.

[AlexM]

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Nobody is going to tell you that their theory of the state includes coercive, illegitimate force.

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Of course they're not. Unfortunately that doesn't mean that their theory of the state does not include coercive, illegitimate force.

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Nah, someone around here, Arfinn, IIRC, flat-out admitted it - at least when it comes to foreign policy. I'm sure he'll tell you that domestically everything is on the up and up.

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There are plenty of statists that will admit that the behavior of the state is inherently "wrong" but simply believe that the ends justifies the means.

[Kaj]

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There are plenty of statists that will admit that the behavior of the state is inherently "wrong" but simply believe that the ends justifies the means.

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I believe a case can be made for a limited government ("state") which is not inherently wrong and does not initiate force on its citizens. So I disagree with the labeling of statists using the state institutions of the past as a model.

[AlexM]

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There are plenty of statists that will admit that the behavior of the state is inherently "wrong" but simply believe that the ends justifies the means.

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I believe a case can be made for a limited government ("state") which is not inherently wrong and does not initiate force on its citizens. So I disagree with the labeling of statists using the state institutions of the past as a model.

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I don't really consider minarchists statists.

[Borodog]

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There are plenty of statists that will admit that the behavior of the state is inherently "wrong" but simply believe that the ends justifies the means.

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I believe a case can be made for a limited government ("state") which is not inherently wrong and does not initiate force on its citizens.

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Can you describe such a beast? Can this "government" unilaterally create law? Can it tax it's citizens against their will? Can it forceably exclude competition from it's markets? If you answer "yes" to any of these, then it initiates force against its citizens. If you answered "no" to all of them then it is not a government.

[ShakeZula06]

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Yes, I know. This is the "The submarine is made of the wrong brand of screen doors" argument.

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That is such an awesome name for that argument.

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Boro,

Taxation by consent does not necessitate any violence against innocents. The original theory of democracy is that each citizen is both the law-giver and the subject of the law. He is not merely represented by the government (a process with well known flaws), he IS the government. Issues of scale, implementation and scarcity are just a few of the biggest reasons why it has never really occured.

Arendt's 'On Revolution' contains an excellent discussion of the Athenian city-state and the concept of isonomy, or no-rule, which preceded democracy. Athenians would have inerpreted democracy quite literally - 'the rule of the mob' - and not looked upon it so favorably as most do today.

pvn touches on this in his response (basically saying that anything constituting a fully legitimate state would be, in effect, barely a state or no state at all). I agree with pvn that the larger the state gets, the harder it is to manage the interests of all its citizens in a legitimate way, even if the participants have the purest of intentions. In a sense, the government of 'me' is indeed the most legit government. But that doesn't necessarily make it effective.

The reason I mention the difficulty of implementing power, as opposed to force, is because I think it touches on one of my major objections to market anarchism (and more generally, highlights the difficulty of any form of politics). Force and power exist on a spectrum; where one rules completely, the other is absent from the realm of politics. In a totalitarian state, force is the ONLY law; in a perfectly legitimate one, it's power. I find this formulation very elegant. Societies in the real world, of course, have some balance of the two, and that balance is in constant flux. Perhaps the closest we have come to the rule of pure force, in practice, would be fascist states like Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany; however, even there, individuals acting in concert (power) comprised some part of the efforts of the state.

This is the important part: where power is absent, force is the only rule. Power is more fleeting, more temporal, and more fragile than force. If you want to prevent force from being the only law, you must find a way to spread power throughout society, to create participation, civility, and order by mutual consent.

Market anarchists have it right when they object to force as the law of politics. What they don't do, from what I can tell, is talk about how power can supplant force, how it can be spread and developed in a sustainable way. Where power is absent, force WILL rule.