I take political power to mean the organized use of force (violence or threat of violence) to coordinate individual actions in society. Anarchy is the absence of political power or, in Anthony de Jasay’s terms, coordination by voluntary agreement and contract instead of command. An intermediate system is coordination by tribal customs. Here is a brief overview of what we know with a high degree of confidence. (When I say “we,” I mean individuals who share a similar liberal or libertarian philosophy and political economy as I adhere to.)
I will also recommend a few books, most of which are not technical (although all use economic concepts and reasoning), for those who want to push their understanding further. My first recommendation is a delicious little book that uses the triad command-contract-customs to explain economic history: John Hicks, A Theory of Economic History. Hicks was the laureate of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
On the one hand, it appears that political power is useful in certain circumstances or for certain purposes. A defensive war against a worse state is the paradigmatic example. Enforcement of contracts and protection against domestic violence (violence within one’s society) may also require political power. To the extent that, as Friedrich Hayek and James Buchanan (two other Nobel economists) believe, the state (centralized political power) is necessary for the maintenance of a free society, it represents a useful institution. (See James Buchanan, The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan; and Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Vol. 3: The Political Order of a Free People.)
On the other hand, we know that political power is very dangerous. Not only the functions I just mentioned may require more state intervention than many (classical) liberals and certainly many libertarians would like, but the state naturally tends to grow. The public-choice school of economics, inspired by James Buchanan (another Nobel laureate), Gordon Tullock and their collaborators, not to mention modern history, has shown that it is not easy to effectively constrain even a democratic state. In The State, Anthony de Jasay developed what is perhaps the most striking and persuasive theory of the process: political competition leads the rulers and would-be rulers to bid up bribes for their respective political clienteles, who express more and more demands and are more and more dissatisfied. The expected end result is the Plantation State, where the supposed citizens are in fact under the total control of the state. Western societies have been drifting in that direction for more than a century. Most of the rest of the world was already there, or close to there given the rulers’ lack of resources.
Determining when the costs of political power are higher than its benefits is a mission impossible for welfare economics or cost-benefit analysis. One way around this impossibility is a conceptual social contract to which each individual agrees, thereby guaranteeing that the benefits of the package are greater than the costs for each individual. A more technical book on this is James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent. I mention a possible convergence with the work of Friedrich Hayek in my review of Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan’s The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy.
We also have serious theories suggesting that anarchy—social cooperation by voluntary cooperation instead of coercion—could work well if it is really founded on individual liberty as opposed to the Marxist dream of material equality. Under anarchy, the state could not impose on everybody its conception of what its rulers think is “socially optimal.” From Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, we learned that an autoregulated order is possible as well as efficient in the sense that it greatly increases prosperity and individual opportunities. We observed that this sort of social order is not undermined, but reinforced, by free individual choices in matters of religion, books, lifestyles, trade, etc. There are reasons to believe that contract can substitute for command in all domains of life—as shown, for example, by David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom. Many of de Jasay’s collections of articles bear on this topic, as well as his more technical (and perhaps less decisive) Social Contract, Free Ride. Not only can anarchy theoretically provide more prosperity, but a total substitution of contract to command (or customs) also seems morally superior. See, among other books, Michael Huemer’s The Problem of Political Authority; Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia is also very useful (but more technical) even if it stops short of total anarchy. Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto provides a simple introduction but, I think, too simple; it may still be a good antidote if not a salutary electro-shock against all the simplistic or unexamined intuitions lying around.
Yet, we know that anarchy in the sense of the absolute supremacy of free and voluntary cooperation is an untested formula. Mankind’s experience with no organized political power resulted in stifling tribal customs instead of the reign of individual choice and voluntary interaction; I touch on this idea in my review of de Jasay’s Social Justice and the Indian Rope Trick. It is virtually certain that an anarchist experiment hic and nunc, with a population that has learned to depend on political commands and to glorify political leaders, would end up with a breakdown of social order and the ultimate welcoming of tyrants.
Whatever degree of anarchy is possible will, at best, be achieved over a long-term horizon, by gradually chipping away at state power. Although this is banal to say, this project requires teaching our fellow humans to think differently about political power and liberty.
READER COMMENTS
David Seltzer
Nov 21 2023 at 1:27pm
Pierre said “I take political power to mean the organized use of force (violence or threat of violence) to coordinate individual actions in society. Anarchy is the absence of political power or, in Anthony de Jasay’s terms, coordination by voluntary agreement and contract instead of command. An intermediate system is coordination by tribal customs.”
Excellent meditation that provokes reflection. I think the organized use of force, often arbitrary, is hedged by armed individuals with some 466 million guns and trillions of rounds of ammunition. Not the case in many socialist and restrictive nations. If anarchy, as the absence of political power hasn’t broadly obtained, here armed individuals are a countervailing political force. Contract instead of command is better represented in the US than many places in the world, growth killing regulations not withstanding. Does one infer from de Jasay’s coordination by tribal customs human action, not human design? please forgive my disjointed ramblings.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 21 2023 at 3:23pm
David: I don’t understand your last question. Can you reformulate it? (De Jasay does not advocate coordination by tribal customs, although conventions have a large place in his theory.)
David Seltzer
Nov 21 2023 at 4:14pm
Pierre: I should have read him on tribal customs. I was focused on the term coordination as in; competition based prices coordinating transactions.
nobody.really
Nov 21 2023 at 4:37pm
I understand that Buchanan/Tullock favor people making an individualized choice whether to join a group, but also acknowledging that they may well agree to join groups that entail non-unanimous decision-making. Did Buchanan/Tullock discuss people voluntarily joining groups that have exit barriers–making leaving costly/impossible, resulting in a scenario in which individuals did consent, but no longer consent, to group membership?
Now, to quote David Seltzer’s reply above:
Maybe. Yet the US has far and away the highest murder rate among OECD nations. Moreover, of the 50 nations with the highest murder rates, 35 of them (70%) are in the Americas, awash in guns flowing out of the US’s lax regulatory regime. Indeed, among the “nations” with the highest homicide rates is Puerto Rico and the U.S Virgin Islands. (In contrast, the British Virgin Islands have strict gun control laws–and among the lowest homicide rates. But they do have a high drowning rate–so there’s that.) I agree that lots of guns is the hallmark of anarchy–but is it the hallmark of liberty?
Yup, we should strive to guard against the threat posed by an overweening state–as well as threats posed by overweening relatives and neighbors. Most of the world’s population is female, and somehow I sense that females aren’t quite as prone to overlook this latter category of threats.
I’ve heard it said that men’s minds are dominated by fear of loss of status–being dominated or laughed–whereas women’s minds are dominated by fear of being brutalized and killed. In other news, the population of libertarians tends to skew male. Perhaps there’s some causal relationship there.
David Seltzer
Nov 21 2023 at 6:03pm
Nobody, fair points. “I agree that lots of guns is the hallmark of anarchy–but is it the hallmark of liberty?” Is it the hallmark of liberty? I’ll try to answer from my perspective. If a hallmark is a distinguishing characteristic, trait, or feature, then I think guns preserving liberty in complex reality comports with the definition. Personal Note. As one subject to antisemitism, a weapon in the hands of a well trained user offers a better chance of preserving one’s liberty and life. “women’s minds are dominated by fear of being brutalized and killed.” I don’t know what’s in women’s minds, but I do know women who’ve trained at ranges and the military carry weapons. Women’s fear of being brutalized or assaulted in places where personal carry is illegal is tragic. Where one stands depends on where one sits in an imperfect world. Thanks.
Mactoul
Nov 21 2023 at 7:27pm
There are no females in libertarian utopia. There are only individuals.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 22 2023 at 11:22am
Macoul: I fear your argument does not work. If fact, it is not an argument. Classical liberals and libertarians believe in formal, as opposed to material, equality of individuals. Reading Buchanan or Hayek should easily persuade you of that.
Mactoul
Nov 22 2023 at 11:17pm
Laws of all people explicitly deal with sexes. But there is no provision for this in voluminous liberal theorizing. Family is a vital institution and thus family law is a large part of politico-legal order but again liberal thinkers are virtually silent. Indeed, fulminations against stifling customs betray an impatience with the customary family laws and we do see revision of laws tending in an anti-family direction. For instance, laws against divorce are repealed and laws are passed to enable easy divorce.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 22 2023 at 9:31am
Nobody: You write:
It is not clear if your question is about joining private groups or the social contract. In the case of private groups, the individual cannot sell himself into slavery, if only because the state would not enforce the contract. (The reason d’être of the social contract is to obtain the benefit of some collective actions while avoiding war and tyranny.) Your question is much more interesting and difficult concerning the social contract and the state. The way I read Buchanan and his collaborators, they adopt two stances that look contradictory. First, they claim that the (unanimous) social contract is continuously renegotiated. It’s not totally clear how. Second, they claim–or at least Buchanan and Brennan do–that the simple fact of remaining in a society means that you have agreed with its social contract. This, of course, raises major problems which I mention in my review of The Reason of Rules.
nobody.really
Nov 23 2023 at 12:56am
As Thanksgiving approaches, let me again express my thanks for this blog, and its many thoughtful authors and commenters. Internet authors often live in doubt that their efforts have any consequence. But to the authors here, let me say that I am unlikely to read many of the texts you comment on, so your efforts to put these texts and lessons into easily digestible form is greatly appreciated, and is influencing at least this one reader’s mind. Indeed, you’ve actually prodded me into reading some of your source materials, and to listen to a few EconTalks. I have only my own testimony to offer, but I hope it gives you satisfaction.
In addition, let me also thank whoever edited my comment above. I quoted David Seltzer’s reply, but neglected to cite that fact; some kind soul filled in that citation for me (and I cringe to imagine that I burdened Pierre Lemieux with that task). Anyway I–and perhaps other readers here–appreciate it. This is just one more thing that contributes to the quality of this blog.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Nov 21 2023 at 5:57pm
Isn’t boring old CBA the best conceptual instrument for gradually chipping away at state power? Even if redistribution in the utility function of the analyst, isn’t that preferable to “native” policy?
BTW I get the public choice theory for state growth, but I would not overlook ideological mechanisms. Some people support protectionism, for example that do not benefit from it(and if they do not are probably harmed). Ditto taxation of net CO2 emissions.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 22 2023 at 9:13am
Thomas: To your first question, the only benefit I (now) see in CBA is to slow down new projects (and perhaps, with a benevolent government, like, say, the Trump administration, to seriously look at who will gain and who will lose from the project). As I mentioned before, I am still looking to find a situation where a government, after a CBA showed its pet project X had higher “social costs” than “social benefits,” declared: “We have killed Project X because the cost-benefit analysis realized that its social costs would have been higher that its social benefits. In advancing this project, we now realize that we were mistaken. Sorry.” What they do in practice is to adapt their calculations to their goals–as when public health economists, whose main customer if not employer is governments, invented “internalities” and abolished the consumer surplus to prove that governments were right to attack smokers. It is not by mere happenstance that the Biden administration has reduced the number of proposed regulations that will be submitted to a partial CBA.
I agree with your last paragraph, of course. If you look at Buchanan’s Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative, you will probably find more ethics that you can stomach. It is the same in Hayek.
Mactoul
Nov 21 2023 at 9:11pm
Anarchism a la David Friedman is supreme example of rationalist project, quite contrary to evolved social order everywhere.
In this sense of unbridled rationalism and ameliorism, the anarchism is quite similar to its cousin, the communism. Which is not a big surprise, as both are offspring of Enlightenment.
Here we see, in replay , the easy evolution of Mills from liberty to socialism. Spontaneous order to a manufactured order.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 22 2023 at 11:41am
Mactoul: Have a look at Friedman’s Law’s Order. It might change your mind. This being said, Hayek’s distinction in “Individualism, True and False” (reproduced in Individualism and Economic Order) is worth keeping in mind–although Hayek seems to have become more radical with age.
Mactoul
Nov 21 2023 at 11:36pm
So, why in 2023, after thousands of years of states, we are all not serfs but enjoying freedom greater than what ancient people had. Perhaps, liberty grows with the state? And anarchism is not optimal for liberty?
There is no even. It is well-known from ancient times that democracies have this peculiar trouble.
the Plantation State, where the supposed citizens are in fact under the total control of the state.
Born of ameliorism inherent and present in liberalism from its very beginning. Communism was offshoot of liberalism. The illiberal ancient regimes didn’t have the same tendency.
Jon Murphy
Nov 22 2023 at 9:02am
Details are going to matter here. Some states had massive, powerful states but no liberty and they greatly curtailed liberty and economic growht (USSR, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Fascist Spain, Argentina, Red China, socialist India, just to name a few). Other states had much smaller states and thrived (America, Great Britain, etc). It is not the size of the state that matters but the institutions within. Institutions that foster “ordered anarchy,” that promote experimentation, and promote liberty tend to cause states to thrive. Institutions that discourage individualism, discourage experimentation, discourage liberty tend to destroy.
Serfdom, which liberalism rebelled against, was literally a plantation state. Further, communism was not an offshoot of liberalism; it arose directly as a rejection of liberalism (especially in the 20th Century).
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 22 2023 at 9:44am
Jon: Yes. I would add that in The Road to Serfdom, Hayek shows that it was the same for Nazism (and fascism à la Mussolini). From the 18th century on, most if not all justifications of the encompassing state were explicit reactions against classical liberalism.
Mactoul
Nov 22 2023 at 11:28pm
Great Britain in 1756-63 fought a war against France simultaneously in Europe, North America and India. Modern state with its minute regulations arose first in Europe (and in more developed western part at that). So, it simply can’t be maintained that the liberal states had smaller state. Even compared with Nazi Germany and Soviet Union, the British state was no less organized.
So India with stock market, private industry and private agriculture (and no national welfare and health scheme) was socialist and Britain with National Heath Scheme, nationalized mines, nationalized railways, food rationing, currency controls was not?
Jon Murphy
Nov 24 2023 at 12:49pm
But it was considerably smaller. Those totalitarian states controlled every aspect of life for their citizens. Great Britian did not: most of social and personal life was left outside the realm of government.
Generally speaking, yes. India was far more socialist in general. India didn;t liberalize until the 90s. Britian was socialist immediately after World War 2, as you properly note, but in general has been far more liberal.
steve
Nov 22 2023 at 12:26pm
There is a reason that there is no successful model of working anarchy anywhere, the same as there is no model of communism succeeding anywhere. Both assume models of human behavior that dont really exist. The issue is not if we need government but how much and who pays for it.
Steve
Jon Murphy
Nov 22 2023 at 2:03pm
There are many examples of working anarchy. Most of our relationships are anarchic.
steve
Nov 22 2023 at 4:46pm
Sorry jon. Let’s say economic models and something on a larger scale than on the personal level. I would also point out our relationships might be anarchic but it’s not in the context of a world of anarchy. I think history shows that relationships dont work out as well when you there is general anarchy.
Steve
Jon Murphy
Nov 24 2023 at 12:45pm
Like the Internet?
Let’s be clear about what you mean by “don’t work out as well.” That cam imply that they work but are not optimal. Or that they do not work at all. I am not a political anarchist because I think that, while anarchy works, it is not optimal. A sufficiently-constrained government can improve everyone’s wellbeing over a state of anarchy.
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 22 2023 at 3:58pm
Steve: Good models of anarchy use only a selfish homo economicus. Such is de Jasay’s model as is Friedman’s. It’s a methodology to avoid the problem you are raising. Have a look at de Jasay’s Against Politics. Note also that nothing says we are at the end of history.
Mactoul
Nov 22 2023 at 11:07pm
Contracts exist only in an overarching politico-legal order and richer this order, richer is the variety of contracts. It is fanciful to have contracts generating the politico-legal order. There are no real-world examples.
Indeed, contract is also a custom. Otherwise, how a free person to be bound tomorrow by what he says today?
Pierre Lemieux
Nov 23 2023 at 11:48pm
With due respect, Mactoul, you seem to confuse many things. Id you read de Jasay, you would probably find yourself in agreement with many elements of his criticism of the social contract (not of private contracts). But his criticism is consistent, and understanding it requires an effort–and perhaps, during the time of reading, to forget what you think you know.
Creigh Gordon
Nov 24 2023 at 12:49pm
Political power is dangerous because all power is dangerous. Political power tends to expand because all power tends to expand. The first and most important purpose of government is to shield citizens from undue power.
Is there a tension there? Yes.
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