Friday, December 16, 2011
There is an inherent dissonance in propertarian anarchism which leads to the conclusion that it is actually compatible with a state and provides grounds for justifying a state. The argument for this can be made purely through taking the explicit and implicit premises of propertarians and making basic inferences. This is an argument that I've made many times before, but I'd like to present it here in a clear manner.
But firstly, to avoid charges of misrepresentation, I'll clarify what I mean by "propertarian anarchism". With this term, I generally refer to anarcho-capitalism and closely related variants of market anarchism, and by "propertarian" I mean views which favor absolute or near-absolute property rights (including property in land), which tends to come from a so-called "neo-Lockean" type of position. Generally, my critique applies to anyone with the pretense of "anarchism" who adopts something resembling the "natural law" approach to libertarianism, in which the "neo-Lockean" narrative plays an important role.
A characteristic feature of the "neo-Lockean" narrative is that it focuses on the question of property asquisition as a standard for "legitimacy". The thrust of the propertarian case against the state, in this context, is the argument that it did not "legitimately" achieve ownership over the land that it has jurisdiction over. With this being taken for granted, it may seem rather bizarre for me to assert that the very people who are prone to make this argument - people who in good faith consider themselves to be "anti-statist" - implicitlysupport states. But as we delve into the related premises involved in this, it should become quite clear that this is the case.
In such a propertarian view, a distinction between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" authority is at least implicitly made on the basis of property asquisition norms. The flip side of the argument that an authority is "illegitimate" if it doesn't "justly" have property, is the implication that an authority is "legitimate" if it does "justly" have property. Typically, propertarians will have no problem aknowledging this when the subject of controversy is, say, a factory boss. Of course, this already pits the propertarians against the anarchist tradition and can be objected to for various reasons. But putting that aside, if we explicitly give the context of a state (or an institution that has all the power we'd associate with a state), its authority would have to be regarded as "legitimate" by this theory on nothing more than the condition of land asquisition norms.
Let's be clear: The charge that what the state does is immoral or criminal by such standards is predicated only on the theory of legitimacy in property asquisition, or to put it more broadly, only on the grounds of the means to obtaining power. In effect, the propertarian does have grounds for objecting to a particular state relative to its origins, but they have no grounds to object to the authoritarianism of states. On the flip side, they have grounds for actually supporting absolute or state-like authority on the basis of property rights. In other words, what the propertarian view presents us with is inadvertently actually a criteria for a just state. That criteria would be the property asquisition norms.
If the conditions of "legitimate asquisition" are met, the theory must construe authority (including political authority) as "justified" in that context. If the "legitimate" authority happens to take on all the kinds of powers and functions of a state, the problem is that how it got land is pretty much irrelevant if our concern is with authority. A version of "anarchism" that can rationalize absolute authority is going to be in trouble if anti-authoritarianism is a guiding value for anarchism. Whether one wants to formally label something "state" or not kind of misses the point, which is that the propertarian view doesn't particularly involve a very strong skepticism about or limitation on authority. This just so happens to leave it without a strong objection to states too.
The problem stems from the fact that for propertarians, property rights effectively grant a "legitimate" property owner with virtually arbitrary authority to make and enforce rules(something which, on larger scales, states do). When we apply this to land, in effect we end up with land plots as potential dictatorships, when we note the fact that people exist within such spaces. While some may be inclined to immediately think of the most small-scale and seemingly innocent examples of land ownership and dismiss this concern by bringing up trivial examples ("could you take your shoes off before walking into my house?"), the more we increase the scale of land in question the more obvious the problem is.
But I would also maintain that the problem exists regardless of scale, since the propertarian practically places no limits on the authority of owners (perhaps short of justifying obvious murder). The open-ended sanction of authority by property rights is just as compatible with what nearly everyone would recognize as absurd demands and sociopathic behavior as it is with trivial norms of respect when you're in someone else's home. The propertarian view still grants the land owner the authority to be a tyrant, whether they act as one or not. Coercion in general is not precluded by the theory of property rights. In the terms we've been speaking of, we'd have to say that the right to property is the right to coerce.
In anticipation of objections I've long-since encountered, I have to emphasize that the above argument is not an argument from hypotheticals, possible worlds, life boat scenarios, or consequentialism. It is purely an argument from logical entailment of the premises outlined. Responding to it by declaring "that isn't likely to happen" does not address the actual argument, because the argument is not about what is likely to happen but what must implicitly be concluded by the premises. What must be concluded by the premises is that a state is legitimate if it obtains power through the proper means. No amount of conjecture about hypotheticals can get around this.
I hope that I've established pretty well that there is an inherent tension between the pretense of anti-authoritarianism and absolute property rights. It may be objected by some that there are propertarians with a significant commitment to anti-authoritarianism, but based on what I've said they can't hold that position without dissonance, and the inevitable result of following through with the anti-authoritarianism would be to limit property rights in some way. But for the vast majority of propertarians, this just isn't an option. Their primary commitment, when push comes to shove, is to property rights. And the consequences of that commitment are dissonant with anarchism.
If we do want to delve into argumentation about hypothetical possibilities, at this point the propertarian has to either make the case that it is an priori impossibility for personal freedom to significantly be violated and for states to form in a propertarian society (which would just be utopianism that no one has any good reason to accept, in the absence of a world filled with libertarians who are all empathetic angels), or at least that it is highly unlikely (perhaps because of "incentives" within a libertarian society). But it would seem to be the case that observations of history and sociology would pretty easily undermine such a claim. In the absence of a significantly anti-authoritarian culture, there is no reason to believe that objectionable power structures couldn't or wouldn't arise in such an environment.
Since propertarians generally do not promote a significantly anti-authoritarian culture, they don't have the necessary tools within their social philosophy to address the problem. Even worse, they can't address the problem because to one extent or another they are themselves committed to authoritarianism as an entailment of their principles. The framework that they choose to work with is mired in notions about "legitimacy" that are essentially leftovers from a non-anarchist approach to politics rooted in the political philosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries. The consequence of trying to impose (right-wing aspects of) classical liberalism onto anarchism is to more or less negate anarchism. If propertarians are really interested in anarchism, they should check their premises.
But firstly, to avoid charges of misrepresentation, I'll clarify what I mean by "propertarian anarchism". With this term, I generally refer to anarcho-capitalism and closely related variants of market anarchism, and by "propertarian" I mean views which favor absolute or near-absolute property rights (including property in land), which tends to come from a so-called "neo-Lockean" type of position. Generally, my critique applies to anyone with the pretense of "anarchism" who adopts something resembling the "natural law" approach to libertarianism, in which the "neo-Lockean" narrative plays an important role.
A characteristic feature of the "neo-Lockean" narrative is that it focuses on the question of property asquisition as a standard for "legitimacy". The thrust of the propertarian case against the state, in this context, is the argument that it did not "legitimately" achieve ownership over the land that it has jurisdiction over. With this being taken for granted, it may seem rather bizarre for me to assert that the very people who are prone to make this argument - people who in good faith consider themselves to be "anti-statist" - implicitlysupport states. But as we delve into the related premises involved in this, it should become quite clear that this is the case.
In such a propertarian view, a distinction between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" authority is at least implicitly made on the basis of property asquisition norms. The flip side of the argument that an authority is "illegitimate" if it doesn't "justly" have property, is the implication that an authority is "legitimate" if it does "justly" have property. Typically, propertarians will have no problem aknowledging this when the subject of controversy is, say, a factory boss. Of course, this already pits the propertarians against the anarchist tradition and can be objected to for various reasons. But putting that aside, if we explicitly give the context of a state (or an institution that has all the power we'd associate with a state), its authority would have to be regarded as "legitimate" by this theory on nothing more than the condition of land asquisition norms.
Let's be clear: The charge that what the state does is immoral or criminal by such standards is predicated only on the theory of legitimacy in property asquisition, or to put it more broadly, only on the grounds of the means to obtaining power. In effect, the propertarian does have grounds for objecting to a particular state relative to its origins, but they have no grounds to object to the authoritarianism of states. On the flip side, they have grounds for actually supporting absolute or state-like authority on the basis of property rights. In other words, what the propertarian view presents us with is inadvertently actually a criteria for a just state. That criteria would be the property asquisition norms.
If the conditions of "legitimate asquisition" are met, the theory must construe authority (including political authority) as "justified" in that context. If the "legitimate" authority happens to take on all the kinds of powers and functions of a state, the problem is that how it got land is pretty much irrelevant if our concern is with authority. A version of "anarchism" that can rationalize absolute authority is going to be in trouble if anti-authoritarianism is a guiding value for anarchism. Whether one wants to formally label something "state" or not kind of misses the point, which is that the propertarian view doesn't particularly involve a very strong skepticism about or limitation on authority. This just so happens to leave it without a strong objection to states too.
The problem stems from the fact that for propertarians, property rights effectively grant a "legitimate" property owner with virtually arbitrary authority to make and enforce rules(something which, on larger scales, states do). When we apply this to land, in effect we end up with land plots as potential dictatorships, when we note the fact that people exist within such spaces. While some may be inclined to immediately think of the most small-scale and seemingly innocent examples of land ownership and dismiss this concern by bringing up trivial examples ("could you take your shoes off before walking into my house?"), the more we increase the scale of land in question the more obvious the problem is.
But I would also maintain that the problem exists regardless of scale, since the propertarian practically places no limits on the authority of owners (perhaps short of justifying obvious murder). The open-ended sanction of authority by property rights is just as compatible with what nearly everyone would recognize as absurd demands and sociopathic behavior as it is with trivial norms of respect when you're in someone else's home. The propertarian view still grants the land owner the authority to be a tyrant, whether they act as one or not. Coercion in general is not precluded by the theory of property rights. In the terms we've been speaking of, we'd have to say that the right to property is the right to coerce.
In anticipation of objections I've long-since encountered, I have to emphasize that the above argument is not an argument from hypotheticals, possible worlds, life boat scenarios, or consequentialism. It is purely an argument from logical entailment of the premises outlined. Responding to it by declaring "that isn't likely to happen" does not address the actual argument, because the argument is not about what is likely to happen but what must implicitly be concluded by the premises. What must be concluded by the premises is that a state is legitimate if it obtains power through the proper means. No amount of conjecture about hypotheticals can get around this.
I hope that I've established pretty well that there is an inherent tension between the pretense of anti-authoritarianism and absolute property rights. It may be objected by some that there are propertarians with a significant commitment to anti-authoritarianism, but based on what I've said they can't hold that position without dissonance, and the inevitable result of following through with the anti-authoritarianism would be to limit property rights in some way. But for the vast majority of propertarians, this just isn't an option. Their primary commitment, when push comes to shove, is to property rights. And the consequences of that commitment are dissonant with anarchism.
If we do want to delve into argumentation about hypothetical possibilities, at this point the propertarian has to either make the case that it is an priori impossibility for personal freedom to significantly be violated and for states to form in a propertarian society (which would just be utopianism that no one has any good reason to accept, in the absence of a world filled with libertarians who are all empathetic angels), or at least that it is highly unlikely (perhaps because of "incentives" within a libertarian society). But it would seem to be the case that observations of history and sociology would pretty easily undermine such a claim. In the absence of a significantly anti-authoritarian culture, there is no reason to believe that objectionable power structures couldn't or wouldn't arise in such an environment.
Since propertarians generally do not promote a significantly anti-authoritarian culture, they don't have the necessary tools within their social philosophy to address the problem. Even worse, they can't address the problem because to one extent or another they are themselves committed to authoritarianism as an entailment of their principles. The framework that they choose to work with is mired in notions about "legitimacy" that are essentially leftovers from a non-anarchist approach to politics rooted in the political philosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries. The consequence of trying to impose (right-wing aspects of) classical liberalism onto anarchism is to more or less negate anarchism. If propertarians are really interested in anarchism, they should check their premises.
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