In Defense of Anarchism

>In Defense of Anarchism © 1996 by Paul Roasberry

Governments have failed. Those who argue that we "need" them insist that governments exist to protect us from violent aggression, to provide vital services, and to administer justice.

They do nothing of the kind.

Let's step back for a moment and consider something so fundamental that we easily tend to disregard or ignore its importance. Who -- what institution -- committed virtually all of history's most monstrous, destructive, violent acts? Who perpetrated the pogroms, the holocausts, and the Inquisitions that we read about with horror and disgust? Who launched virtually all the wars?

Be honest: were not these deeds, all of them, committed either by governments or would-be governments? And has any government administered any "vital service" other than wastefully, artlessly and inefficiently, anywhere? Under governments, justice is awarded to ruling elites, and those who are powerless, do without.

Those who tell us that we always need a government of some sorts claim that it is because human nature is basically "bad," and that unless there were formal institutions in place to compel us to be good and law-abiding, society would collapse, instantly, into a free-for-all of warring interests. The image they invariably invoke is one of citizens running wild in the streets, shooting and beating one another with total abandon, looting and burning one another's property.

What they are effectively describing, though, is precisely the state of affairs that exists now, under governments. Wherever you look, whether in Somalia or Liberia or Watts, half the looters and arsonists are uniformed, "official" thugs -- soldiers and policemen, whose brutality is sanctioned and legalized -- while the other half are the oppressed and downtrodden, trying in the only way they know how to remove the yoke of slavery. The root cause of all political violence is government.

What have governments ever done to stamp out violent warfare? It is the business of government to make war, to prosecute it on a grand and bloody scale.

Government, we are told, enforces the moral norms of a society. This makes no sense whatsoever.

Think for a moment. Suppose two small children are arguing, and one of them picks up a stick and strikes the other, in full view of one of their parents. In all likelihood, the outraged adult will attempt to extort an apology from the malefactor. "Now be a good boy and tell Mikey you're sorry you hit him, or I'll take your T.V. priveleges away for a week!" But apologies extracted in this manner are given grudgingly, and are insincere, and once the governing parent has gone away, the fighting usually resumes. We are likely to discount confessions obtained under torture, but the fact is that any act or statement made under duress is counterfeit. How can anyone possibly enforce morality? An act simply isn't moral at all if it has to be compelled. Its morality is bogus.

Doesn't morality, authentic morality, imply a necessary element of voluntarism? Are persons who are coerced into doing the right thing truly as good as we who do the proper thing voluntarily and unprompted? Morality must spring from within, and can never be imposed from without. Compulsion and coercion can accomplish only a grudging compliance with "law," but can never result in morality. The latter can only fluorish and develop in a climate of unqualified freedom, where individuals exercise choices.

The best way to teach morality is by setting a good example, not by wielding a cudgel. Government's boosters argue that men and women can't be counted upon to be peaceable and decent in an ungoverned state. For that reason, they insist, morality has to be enforced, which is to say, it has to be dictated at gunpoint.

However, the very "morality" they attempt to enforce makes no sense at all. As subjects of government, we are compelled to kill total strangers in the prosecution of our leaders' wars; we are required to accept corruption and hypocrisy in government as "a necessary evil," and we are led to accept the notion that the best way to combat violence is with superior violence.

Not only do these contradictions defy common sense, but they defy the so-called religious wisdom we are cynically taught as children, making us all into hypocrites -- fellow co-conspirators, if you will -- with the thoroughly amoral tyrants who rule us.

If this innate "badness" in men were true, then real morality, or the impulse to do good because it is good (and not merely because it is mandatory), would be an impossibility. But is mankind really as evil-natured as those who clamor for government contend? Or do they perhaps have other motives for making their claim?

Given the extreme range of behaviors that we find in human populations all over the world, any instance of which can be considered "normal" in its own local contxt, who can even claim that "human nature" is one thing or another? One society discourages polygamy, another embraces it; one tribe eats pork and another abstains; certain Pacific islanders practice ritual cannibalism, but we regard it as a crime.

"Human nature," like "the popular will," "national security," and other such fictions, merely serves as a useful pretext for those who wish to rationalize or justify some form of coercion. It is a generalization, and all generalizations are dangerous. I am always immediately suspicious whenever some charlatan says that "the people want such-and-such," or that "everybody knows this to be the case." I am skeptical of every claim to the effect that "human nature is . . . ," for no such thing as "human nature" can even be identified or defined in any intelligible sense. On this earth, there are both selfish and sharing persons, quiet persons and loud, the stupid and the bright, ambitious men and lazy ones, good men and bad -- individual natures can be described, but not some abstract, idealized, false, generalized nature.

Think about it: If men and women were "essentially wicked" -- if this were really their "nature" -- then governments, being composed of men and women, would also have to be wicked. Therefore, the alleged wickedness of man cannot possibly justify government. But if men and women were capable of good, if they could be truly good only in the absence of coercion, there should be no need for government, for they could always organize themselves voluntarily to accomplish any large social projects or common goals, and they could arbitrate their disputes themselves, without formal laws, courts, and jails, even as many smaller social units -- neighbors and families, for instance -- arbitrate disputes among themselves already.

The conclusion has to be that if men and women are wicked, then government is undesirable for this simple reason: power is more dangerous than liberty. We do not fight arson by handing out flamethrowers. If our objective is to halt the oppression of certain groups of men by others, does it make any sense to create coercive institutions that will attract every would-be tyrant, every aspiring bully, and provide them with the very weapons they require to subdue us?

Since men and women are capable of truly moral acts (we do not have to look far to cite examples), then, at least for them, government is unnecessary. There is no good reason why human affairs cannot be conducted, morally, along lines of strict voluntarism far more efficiently than they are under brutal, bullying governments. There is not one category of social endeavor that cannot be handled through private initiative and voluntary cooperation. Roads can be paved and paid for, mail can be delivered, fires can be extinguished, schools can be built and staffed, all in an unmanaged, unregulated, ungoverned economy.

As for those "services" which are not at all legitimate -- taxation, conscription, regulation and all the thousands of forms of interference and harrassment that characterize the day-to-day business of all governmental agencies -- well, we shouldn't have to pay for them in any case. Of those who derive their incomes, directly or indirectly, from a paternalistic government, we should demand, "Get a job doing something useful for which free men and women would voluntarily pay you, and stop picking our pockets!" Institutionalized wickedness, hiding behind the policeman's baton, is a thousand times more unpardonable than the wicked deeds of a few random individuals. Legitimizing, institutionalizing, and legalizing evil would seem to be at cross purposes with the alleged function of governments. If, in order to prevent murder, we need to commit murder with lethal injections and electric chairs; if, in order to forestall war we need to wage it; if, in order to protect citizens from theft we need to steal from them under the guise of 'taxation'; if, in order to preserve liberty we need to destroy it with laws, laws and more laws -- we have accomplished nothing. Government has accomplished nothing. It has failed. Power is the most dangerous thing you can confer to an evil man. A lone homicidal maniac is one thing. A homicidal maniac with vast armies and bureaus and departments at his command -- an Adolf Hitler -- is quite another. A cat burglar in your neighborhood is one thing. Ferdinand Marcos is another. What kind of a trade-off is it if, in order to protect ourselves from an occasional Ted Bundy, we have to put up with the far more horrific despotism of a Janet Reno Justice Department as it surrounds the headquarters of small religious sects with military armored vehicles and proceeds to demolish and incinerate them? Even Ted Bundy, in his entire career, didn't murder as many innocent people as Janet Reno did in a single morning.

It is unrealistic -- in fact, impossible -- to eliminate violence and crime altogether. All we can do is minimize the risks. The Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta said,

"We do not believe in the infallibility, nor even in the general goodness of the masses; on the contrary. But we believe even less in the infallibility and goodness of those who seize power and legislate, who consolidate and perpetuate the ideas and interests which prevail at any given moment. In every respect, the injustice, and transitory violence of the people is preferable to the leaden-rule, the legalized State violence of the judiciary and police."

Of all the world's industrialized nations, the United States now has a higher percentage of its citizens behind bars than any other country. The United States government is doing a perfectly spendid job of enforcing morality at gunpoint.

However, in spite of the alarming proliferation of prisons and the billions of dollars being pumped into "crime-fighting" budgets, crime has not been supressed. To the contrary, criminal violence is multiplying, explosively. The evidence everywhere suggests strongly that force and compulsion are more effective in promoting violence than in preventing it. Police departments in our big cities are looking more and more like paramilitary units, and citizens are no safer for it than they were twenty or thirty or fifty years ago. Government has failed.

And as if I had to mention it, the police themselves are now, predictably, above the law, framing the innocent, planting evidence, invoking the "Fifth Amendment" when caught in the act, and going scot free.

The police have no real interest in preventing crimes -- they'd be out of a job, which is why cops stir up trouble where there isn't any, welcoming any new statute that "outlaws" those perfectly harmless, victimless, private activities scorned by prudes. Anything that provides them with an opportunity to arrest more victims is good for business.

The truth is, government doesn't really protect you from any of the things you fear. You are just as likely to be robbed, beaten, murdered or raped in a society crawling with cops as you are in one that has few or none. And in societies where the cops strut around heavily armed, you are more likely to be shot than you are where they are unarmed, as they are in Great Britain -- whose culture, incidentally, is not unlike our own in most other important respects. The government can only dispense counterfeit justice on your behalf, at an exorbitant cost. No right thinking individual seriously believes, any more, that threats of imprisonment or execution really deter crime. Government can only punish. Revenge, like philanthropy, has become a state-sanctioned monopoly, and as with the business of delivering the mail, the job is done poorly, and with too many coffee breaks, by overpaid simpletons.

The police are under no obligation to protect anyone. In actions which have been brought against police for failing to prevent violent crimes, the police have successfully argued that they they are under no such responsibility to protect the public, and that their sole function is to apprehend criminals after the fact. All of which makes those decals on their patrol cars, promising to "serve and protect," a cynical lie.

1968, I was assaulted and beaten. It took a surgeon several hours to pull all the fragments of my shattered eyeglasses out of my right eye. Not only were the police powerless to prevent this attack, they were unable to make an arrest, despite my positive identification of one of the attackers and my positive identification of the vehicle they got away in (I had kept shouting the license number of the car over and over again until the paramedics came). You see, my assailant simply rounded up five or six of his buddies, who testified that he was "out of town" at the time of the incident, and the district attorney dropped the entire matter. In this country, the word of ten liars outweighs the word of one victim, because majorities are sacrosanct and individuals count for nothing. I was "outvoted." So much for justice. So much for cops. I've been a victim of violence, and I have nothing but hatred and contempt for the police.

Government has failed. Inflated police budgets have not guaranteed anyone's security. We are not any safer for the scores of new prisons that are being built in our communities. If anything, we are now confronted with one added peril -- that of the berserk policeman bludgeoning us, or shoving our faces into plate glass windows, while his smirking buddies stand aside and egg him on. I would truly be surprised if you could read a newspaper every day for a month without learning about some such incident.

The trouble is, no one has any incentive to act morally in a society where morality is enforced. Government has usurped this responsibility, and it has failed.

In a society where citizens are told that the police will protect them, we find women beaten to death in broad daylight, in front of fifty witnesses, all of whom refrain from assisting her in the mistaken belief that this is someone else's job.

In actuality, there are both good and wicked men and women. The wicked are frequently drawn to careers in politics and "law enforcement." The normal venue for bullies is a position of "leadership," where the tools of coercion are ready-made and where their usage is expected. Apologists for government, painting a grim make-believe picture of rioting and license in a world without government, seem to ignore the tens of millions of human beings who have been murdered, tortured, orphaned, looted, widowed, raped and maimed by governments in the twentieth century alone.

The greatest horrors of history, from the Nazi Holocaust to the Stalin purges to the My Lai massacre, were the responsibility of -- you guessed it -- governments.

It seems to me that those who howl for more government, for more laws, for more police, for bigger armies and more devastating weapons, ought to be put to task and made to answer for the crimes and outrages their vaunted governments have loosed upon the world. How can you possibly justify government, or argue the need for it, in the face of its record?

No anarchist that I know of has ever conscripted unwilling young men to go off and die in wars; no anarchist has smugly dropped incendiary or nuclear bombs from a high flying plane on unsuspecting civilian populations; no anarchist has built camps and gas chambers and ovens to expunge his political enemies; no anarchist has sent hordes of agents out among you to "tax" you, like a Mafia extortionist, for worthless, wasteful, unwanted, mismanaged "services."

No, anarchists do not do these things. Governments do.

Man is not an exception to nature; he is a part of it. He is not above the other animals; he is one of them. On this planet, there are millions of other species, and not one of them has come anywhere close to building something like a gas chamber, or a prison, or a lunatic asylum, or a church, or a palace. Look at the other animals and bow your head in shame: they are anarchists and we are not.

No, we are far, far above them. We have Hitler. We have Dachau. We have Nixon. We have Lieutenant Calley. We have government.

Anarchy, not government, is the norm among creatures on this planet. Government, like bleeding the sick with leeches, and divining the future with chicken entrails -- although all are equally the noble products of human "intelligence" -- has far outlived its utility.

Sadly, however, Anarchy -- which is nothing more than the absence of coercion, compulsion and slavery -- is a distant prospect at best. Most of us are still addicted to having our lives run for us. We have forgotten how to be moral without being coerced.

But if all the rest of humanity were drunken alcoholics, should we, who are stone sober, admit to the "necessity" of drunkenness? Should we persist in regarding drunkenness as an inevitable consequence of "human nature?" No.

As long as there are men and women capable of living intelligently, peacefully, and harmoniously together, without police and armies and corrupt masters, as I know there are within my own close circle of friends, then I will continue to hold that as my vision of the ideal, not the farcical tyranny of the herd, not the cowardly "democracy" that others tout as the very apotheosis of political and organizational enlightenment. Still, perhaps there are those of you who think that voting makes you free -- as though being offered a choice of tyrants is any choice at all. You imagine that voting confers great power and responsibility.

If you owned a solitary share of IBM stock, you probably wouldn't go around crowing about how your voice in the running of IBM "made a difference." Yet, this is precisely what voters, who are effectively shareholders in a democracy, try to make you think about their "power" at the polls -- "My vote makes a difference!"

The analogy is apt; like IBM, a democracy is controlled -- ostensibly -- by the voter/ shareholders, but in reality, in practice, it invariably turns out to be something quite different. Like IBM, a democracy is an organization actually steered by an entrenched elite who rule by proxy.

The only significant difference between IBM and a democracy is this: IBM does not compel anyone to be an unwilling shareholder. A democracy does.

Democracy is hopelessly utopian; it doesn't work. Democracy is an impractical ideal. Democracy, in short, possesses all the faults that critics like to level against anarchy.

Henry David Thoreau wrote in Civil Disobedience,

"I heartily accept the motto, -- 'That government is best which governs least;' and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, -- 'That government is best which governs not at all;' and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."

Thoreau may have been a bit optimistic. Like children who have grown up in dysfunctional, abusive homes, and seek out abusive relationships later in life, we poor sheep refuse to give up our browbeating governments, our stormtroopers, our thug cops, our arrogant and autocratic "leaders." And like battered wives who won't leave their husbands, we're going to get the predictable treatment, right down to the bitter end, I'm afraid. But don't blame me -- I don't vot