The arrest of a 19-year-old suspect who had allegedly planned a terrorist attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna carries some lessons in view of what Auberon Herbert, a disciple of Herbert Spencer, wrote in 1894. The suspect, an Austrian citizen “with North Macedonian roots,” who is reported to have sworn allegiance to Islamic State, apparently intended to attack the crowd with knives and explosives. (See “Teenager Confesses to ‘Isis’ Attack Plot Against Taylor Swift Concerts,” Financial Times, August 8, 2024; and “Taylor Swift Terror Suspects Planned to Use Bomb-Filled Car at Concert, Authorities Say,” Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2024).
Auberon Herbert was a British individualist-libertarian anarchist, although he called his philosophy “voluntaryism” and rejected the anarchist label. European anarchists of his time were mostly communists and often terrorists who blew up things to precipitate the revolution. In his Contemporary Review article, “The Ethics of Dynamite” (reproduced in The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, Liberty Fund, 1978), Auberon Herbert argued that the “dynamiters” (the terrorists) were not really against government:
Perhaps I ought at once, for the benefit of some of my friends who are inclined a little incautiously to glorify this word “governing” without thinking of all that is contained in it, to translate the term, which is so often on our lips, into what I hold to be its true meaning: forcing your own will and pleasure, whatever they may be, if you happen to be the stronger, on other persons. … Dynamite is not opposed to government; it is, on the contrary, government in its most intensified and concentrated form. … [Dynamite] is a purer essence of government, more concentrated and intensified, than has ever yet been employed. It is government in a nutshell, government stripped, as some of us aver, of all its dearly beloved fictions, ballot boxes, political parties, House of Commons oratory, and all the rest of it. How, indeed, is it possible to govern more effectively, or in more abbreviated form, than to say: “Do this—or don’t do this—unless you desire that a pound of dynamite should be placed tomorrow evening in your ground-floor study.” It is the perfection, the ne plus ultra, of government.
Speaking of the terrorists, he harangued the governments of his time:
Here is your own child. This is what your doctrine of deified force, this is what your contempt of human rights, this is what your property in men and women leads to.
This was at a time when Western governments were much less powerful than today’s. For sure, the latter are still far from beating at that game Islamic State and many other tyrants in the world. Still, we might reflect on a Senate hearing about another matter related to Taylor Swift but mainly about the government’s dirigiste crusade against so-called monopolies and market inefficiencies—a claim that, coming from the government, is hard to take seriously (“Senate Hearing on Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift Meltdown: Five Takeaways,” Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2023):
Live Nation Entertainment Inc. faced questions from lawmakers in Washington on Tuesday, in a Senate hearing stemming from Ticketmaster’s botched ticket sales last year for Taylor Swift’s coming tour. …
Senators from both political sides of a divided Congress came together to criticize Ticketmaster, with Democrats and Republicans calling for a re-examination of Live Nation’s market power.
Individual liberty and private property are required to prevent social strife or Leviathan. Let people who like Taylor Swift free to patronize her concerts, if she or others can finance them. Those who don’t like Taylor Swift or don’t like fun just have to abstain. And let people who want to go to Taylor Swift’s concerts buy their tickets from whoever organizes these concerts or acts as an agent of the organizers or has tickets to resell.
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Aug 9 2024 at 10:56am
I’m having trouble seeing the connection between the planned act of terror at the concert and the Feds looking into monopoly power.
It is true that governments can and do use force to enforce their will. But that doesn’t make it the same as terrorism per se. Nor is the threat to break up a monopoly the same as “a pound of dynamite should be placed tomorrow evening in your ground-floor study.”
Let us assume, for the moment, that there is unanimous consent that monopolies should not be allowed to exist at all. Let us further assume that governments are perfect, non-corruptable, and follow the law and give due process perfectly. Yes, these are unrealistic assumptions, but I don’t think that matters here.
If a monopoly exists, a government investigates it, the alleged monopolist is given a chance to defend himself, and failing to do so is punished according to the law, then that is something unique and good.
A terrorist, on the contrary, is not bound by law. In acting to achieve the same goal, the terrorist blows up the monopolist. This, although it achieves the same end and has the same goal, is a bad action.
So, while the government and the terrorist have the same goal and achieve the same result, their means are very different. One is praiseworthy. The other is not.
In short, I think Herbert is flattening down the problem too much and creating a specious connection.
All that said, my assumptions above are highly unrealistic. In reality, there are terror states and there are those who will use the levers of power and terror to rule, even if nominally constrained (looking at you, Huey Long). but I think weakening my assumptions doesn’t change. The means, not the ends, matter as well. When governments are proper, their actions constrained by law and due process, their use of force is measured and proportionate. It is not the wonton level of destruction created by terrorism.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 9 2024 at 3:40pm
Jon: You are right on two crucial points: (1) means matter–Hayek would probably say that only means matter; (2) general rules, including the rule of law, make all the difference between a terrorist and a legitimate government official.
But you don’t need your assumptions (not very useful, in my humble opinion) to arrive at these conclusions. And it is important to note that the rule of law does not mean any rule decreed by the government. One example is eugenics, practiced legally in the United States during seven decades. Starting with Indiana in 1907, compulsory sterilization was practiced in some 30 states. 65,000 American women were its victims, half of them before 1940; but that means half of them after 1950. It was practiced until 1980, and the last repeal of a sterilization statute occurred as late as 2008 in Mississippi. (See Paul A. Lombardo, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell [John Hopkins University Press, 2008]. Of course, slavery and Jim Crow were other notable examples. And that was in America.
I read Herbert as emphasizing that the difference between terrorism and government is a matter of degree and sometimes the difference looks small.
Jon Murphy
Aug 9 2024 at 3:51pm
I certainly agree with that. But going after alleged ticket monopolists doesn’t seem to be to be that close in degree to terrorism.
Sure. The assumptions were just to make the point stark.
Absolutely. Sorry, I was unclear. I meant “rule of law” in the Hayek/Dicey/Leoni/A. Smith sense
steve
Aug 9 2024 at 3:58pm
I think matter of degree matters quite a bit. Jaywalking and mass murder are both acts of breaking the law. One is much more consequential. I would also second nobody in noting that there is no known alternative to a govt that uses force that comes close to being the kind of society most of us would want to live in.
Steve
Jon Murphy
Aug 9 2024 at 5:32pm
Again, it’s a matter of degree. Government, like any institution, has its uses. It can be abusive, yes, but it has its uses. For the vast, vast majority of life, however, government is inappropriate. There are countless alternatives that people use to create socieities they wish to live in that do not use violence (Elinor Ostrom’s Governing the Commons is an excellent study on these sorts of institutions. There are many others as well).
steve
Aug 9 2024 at 10:50pm
Ostrom? sigh. Yes, if everyone agrees to cooperate things can work well and you dont need govt interference. But if someone doesnt voluntarily agree or conform to social pressure you dont really have any way to resolve issues like governing the commons. I think it would make sense to try to resolve issues before there is govt involvement but if voluntary compliance fails then you either resort to governance or failure.
Steve
Jon Murphy
Aug 10 2024 at 2:40am
One shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss empirical evidence, especially when it answers the question one poses.
Governance, yes. Government, no.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 10 2024 at 11:23am
Steve: A double rejoinder to your comment:
Obviously, there are limits to your “if voluntary compliance fails then you either resort to governance or failure” (assuming I understand what you mean). The Berlin Wall and the guards’ shooting existed because there was no voluntary compliance. Same for Jim Crow laws or eugenic laws. Something else than “no voluntary compliance” is needed to justify coercion.
Once we realize this, we are led to ask whether non-compliance to “social pressure” does not have a useful function or a justification. What’s wrong with letting free riders ride? (Or to which extent if we want to be conservative.) Anthony de Jasay’s Social Contract, Free Ride is not an easy book, but I recommend reading at least my Regulation review.
nobody.really
Aug 11 2024 at 12:25pm
The idea of social order arising without government strictures intrigues me. Not enough to actually sit down and read books on the subject, but still….
What occupies more of my attention at present is Donald Trump. He seems to illustrate both 1) that the US political system is facilitated by unwriten norms, and 2) unwritten norms fail to rein in people willing to violate them to get what they want. Perhasp the civil rights movement would fall into this category as well: Black people sitting at lunch counters may not have violated a written law, but were certainly violating an unwritten law. Maybe we could compare Trump and MLK on some basis other than the size of their crowds.
If someone were looking for a topic for a blog post (or publication?), consider discussing how an Ostrom-ish social order deals with leaders who see an advantage in overturning that order.
Jon Murphy
Aug 11 2024 at 12:41pm
It did: Jim Crow.
Scores have been written on this, as well as several Nobel Prizes. And that’s just in economics. I’m sure it’s also been explored in political science, sociology, and law.
nobody.really
Aug 9 2024 at 1:16pm
Winston Churchill, Speech to the House of Commons (Nov. 11, 1947) in Winston Churchill, Europe Unite, Speeches 1947 and 1948 (Randolph S. Churchill ed., 1950) at 200.
Yup, governments use force; I don’t want to gloss over that.
That said, I find it difficult to find societies that do NOT use force–or rely on force wielded by others–if for no other reason than to constrain the use of force by others. As Churchill might ask, what other methods have been tried?
(Admittedly, other than one account from 1948, I haven’t read any accounts of how the Amish deal with violent sctizophrenia/autism/substance abuse. I read that the Amish experience child sexual abuse, but I don’t know how much force this entails. I’ve found this video about involuntary commitment among the Amish, but I can’t attest to its accuracy.)
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 9 2024 at 3:45pm
Nobody: Of course, the question you raise is the fundamental question in political philosophy and political economy. But note the following. Somebody writing in the 17th century could have said:
nobody.really
Aug 9 2024 at 5:32pm
I don’t understand. The appropriate response would be, “We don’t need unity of religion in the realm; the realm can operate just fine without it.” Are you making the analogous argument that we don’t need to constrain the use of force by others–that the realm can operate just fine with all people weilding force however they see fit?
Or are you simply arguing that we haven’t really TRIED such a system, so we can’t preclude the possibility that it might work? That is kind of the great “spontaneous order” hypothesis.
Note that the US has undergone a bit of a libertarian awakinging in the sense that the public now hears more about the damage inflicted by police on black people (“Black Lives Matter”). This has prompted some enthusiasm for the Defund the Police movement–primarily among white activists. People of color living in high-crime neighborhoods do not generally share this enthusiasm. Rather, black and Hispanic residents seem to feel that their neighborhoods remain UNDERpoliced. These residents are not ignorant of the problems with the police–but neither are they ignorant of the problems with a lack of police.
Mactoul
Aug 9 2024 at 9:48pm
Private property requires a general state of laws. Otherwise it is a mere possession secured by brute force.
It is no coincidence that private property is more secure in Europe and US than in Africa.
In a state of laws even a child can hold property. Not in anarchist utopia.
Jon Murphy
Aug 9 2024 at 10:28pm
You seem to be using “state” to mean a particular condition in your first sentence. There is nothing objectionable there.*
In your last, though, it seems like you’re using “State” to mean government. But that’d contradict your second paragraph since many African states have far stronger governments (in terms of power over their people) than US or European governments.
So, it’s not clear what your contention is.
*Your claim that without law property is “mere possession secured by brute force” is unsupported by historical and anthropomorphic evidence, however. See The Property Species by Bart Wilson.
Mactoul
Aug 11 2024 at 7:33am
State of laws is not necessarily government.
Economists are apt to handwave away the origin of property thereby escaping the unavoidable conclusion that fullness of private property requires a state of laws thus a political community to exist.
Question is how the possession secured and held? Is it by brute force or by the laws?
In an anarchist utopia, by definition, there are no laws thus you have to secure your possessions by your brute force. And you may be dispossessed by brute force. This isn’t any characteristic of private property.
Jon Murphy
Aug 11 2024 at 8:16am
Given almost every economist since Adam Smith has focused on this topic, your claim is prima facie incorrect.
Incorrect. In anarchy, there is no government. But there certainly are laws.
Mactoul
Aug 12 2024 at 5:47am
Pierre Lemieux in his review of de Jasay’s Social Contract, Free Ride in Regulation vol 47 writes
.. in a state of nature— that is in anarchy.
So he distinguishes anarchy (state of nature) from a state of laws.
Otherwise what is source of laws in an anarchy?
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 12 2024 at 12:48pm
Mactoul: Laws are rules that are enforced (that is, maintained by force). In anarchy, these rules would be conventions. See on this Anthony de Jasay’s Against Politics. David Friedman’s Law’s Order is also useful. The Law Merchant is an example in the Middle Ages.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 12 2024 at 1:11pm
Mactoul–Post Scriptum: The idea that law needs the state to develop is largely a historical error. (The question of whether a whole system of liberal law can survive without the state is another matter.) Examples can be found in the delicious little book of John Hicks, A Theory of Economic History. For example, speaking of financial devices such as guarantees or bills of exchange, he writes:
Monte
Aug 10 2024 at 1:35am
Accepting these definitions against the backdrop of a corrupt government (what Americans fear most, according to an annual Chapman University survey), one could, in the abstract, argue that “the essence of government” is terrorism. Herbert saw “government in its most intensified and concentrated form” as metaphorically equivalent to dynamite. But this equivalence breaks down, as even corrupt regimes retain a semblance legitimacy by operating within legally established frameworks, whereas terrorism’s defining feature is illegal or unsanctioned violence and coercion.
Monte
Aug 10 2024 at 11:49am
Further, Herbert seems to equate every misdeed or offense perpetrated by government as an act of terrorism and sees government as a progenitor of terrorists:
Continuing with this analogy, one might say that government is the base alloy of terrorism.
Jim Glass
Aug 10 2024 at 4:35am
Terrorism as “the Essence of Government”
Okaaay…. Jon Murphy wrote:
Indeed. In fact, the terror attack intended to “kill as many people as possible” was prevented by the government. That’s the government reducing violence and terror. And the investigation into Ticketmaster abusing its monopoly power in principle at least is government further reducing abuse of power. So on the “government-abusing-power” scorecard, that’s negative two.
Which is maybe why we jump back to the mid-1800s with Auberon Herbert proclaiming…
I guess that was 1800s analysis. While at the same time other very smart people were analyzing phlogiston and the aether. Yet as physical sciences have advanced, so have the social sciences. For the relation between the state and violence now we have 21st Century analysis such as: Violence and Social Orders, North et. al.; War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage, Keeley; Why Nations Fail, Acemoglu and Robinson, etc. etc. We also have ample data (linking yet again)…
… showing huge death-by-violence rates in pre-state societies (no governments) versus the very deeply lower rates in state societies (with governments). All of which convincingly show that in reality “the essence of the state (and government) is to reduce violence (and terrorism).” Which enables populations to form stable societies and increase economic activity. Governmental “monopoly of violence” which appalls so many libertarians for some strange reason, actually is a very good thing: monopolists reduce quantity supplied. In “failed states” violence and terrorism explode. See Haiti.
Of course, to further reduce violence and terrorism and abuse of power by governments and everyone else in state societies is a good thing devoutly to be desired. Realistic libertarians have a pretty good track record at it. CATO about 30 years ago proposed a raft of reforms that have been adopted across the Scandinavian countries with great success (apart from open immigration). Don’t tell Bernie Sanders about his socialist heroes.
But proclamations like, ‘Terrorism is the Essence of Government’, c’mon, these prevent near everybody who sees them from ever taking libertarianism seriously. How is Chase Oliver doing in the polls?
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 10 2024 at 12:13pm
Jim: There is something valuable in your traditional evaluation (and you have some major classical liberals on your side), but consider three factors.
First, the 20th century has been the century where, no doubt, political authorities killed the largest numbers of their own citizens: some 165 million have been thus killed outside of interstate wars. (See the late R.G. Rummel’s data and, on his site, a citation of his book on that topic.) Jouvenel’s On Power is also relevant.
Second, Acemoglu, whose Why Nations Fail you cite, does (with his co-authors) show where a belief in the state as a noble savage leads. Have a look at his latest book with Simon Johnson, Power and Progress, which is an ode to the supremacy of collective choices–provided of course they are made by the section of society he loves and against the individual choices of those he hates. (The link above is to my review of this book; I recommend it; it’s short and sweet.)
Third, you might like to read The Problem of Political Authority by contemporary philosopher Michael Huemer. He turns around the argument you echo: peaceful mores have progressed so much, he argues more or less, that it would now or soon be possible to get rid of the state and its violence (he wrote that before the invasion of Ukraine, although he does offer an argument for the stability of future anarchic societies).
Mactoul
Aug 12 2024 at 5:54am
These 165 million were killed by governments which descended from the Enlightenment utopianism
The libertarian utopianism is merely another branch of the Enlightenment.
Communism too promised withering away of the State. Also, do not forget that the anarchists were big allies of the communists as well.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 12 2024 at 11:17am
Mactoul: You write:
One may argue that the Enlightenment started two strands: individual liberty and popular sovereignty. I wouldn’t disagree with this, but would argue, like many if not most classical liberals, that the two ideas are incompatible.
Yet, it is a stretch to say that the Russian, Chinese, and Cambodian states (which make up for the majority of the 165 million) are heir of the Enlightenment. There is a bit too much post hoc prosper hoc there.
Mactoul
Aug 13 2024 at 12:39am
The communist states are certainly a child of the Enlightenment, maybe a step-child but a child nonetheless.
The Russian, the Chinese, the Cambodian communist states certainly do not descend for traditional Russian, Chinese or Cambodian states. They very founders of these Asian Communism learned their communism in Europe, in very France, the heartland of Enlightenment !
Even on the purely theoretical grounds, the link is easy to understand. Equality is one of the pillar of Enlightenment and communism is the climax of the movement towards equality.
Jon Murphy
Aug 13 2024 at 8:50am
Given those states explicitly rejected Enlightenment values, I think we can definitively say they were not heirs of the Enlightenment.
Mactoul
Aug 14 2024 at 12:05am
The Communists merely took the Enlightenment values of Liberty, Fraternity, Equality to their logical end. See David Stove’s On Enlightenment.
Jon Murphy
Aug 14 2024 at 6:30am
They explicitly rejected Enlightenment values. Rejection is not taking things to their “logical end.”
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 10 2024 at 12:27pm
Jim — Post Scriptum: Auberon Herbert, born in 1838 and who was shortly a British member of Parliament, wrote more in the late 19th century than in the middle. On the intellectual history of libertarianism, I strongly recommend the book of Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi, The Individualists. I will review it in the forthcoming (Fall) issue of Regulation, but it’s no substitute for the book. It will probably comfort some of your opinions, and challenge others.
Ahmed Fares
Aug 10 2024 at 2:48pm
[we’re going to need a philosopher on this one]
What happens when a legitimate source of violence supports an illegitimate source of violence? Does that legitimize the illegitimate source of violence, or does that delegitimize the legitimate source of violence?
[Hillary Clinton explaining how the US spreads Wahhabism around. The audio kicks in after a couple of seconds.]
Hillary Clinton : We created Al Qaeda
Ex US Sec of State Hillary Clinton: “Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago… let’s go recruit these mujahideen. …..And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union.”
Hillary Clinton: “we have helped to create the problem we are now fighting”
V. L Elliott
Aug 11 2024 at 9:59am
Mao provided one of the better known descriptions of the use of violence evolves in the process of seizing control of state power. He addressed terrorism but, in hind sight, Mao appears to have not been complete. Thomas Thornton later extended Mao’s description and Donald Hanle expanded Mao/Thornton in his Terrorism: The Newest Face of War. From Hanle’s book the use of terrorism at virtually every stage of socialist/communist takeover can be seen or inferred. After seizing power and taking over the mechanisms of the state, socialists/communists use terrorism to re-program the population. (I do not think this is limited to socialist/communist takeovers.) While this reasoning is developed from Mao, it is also consistent to arguments from political science, especially those of Samuel Huntington on Western style revolutions. Roughly, Huntington says that in Western style revolutions those who seize power then use the mechanisms of the state to conquer the population which is necessary since Western style revolutions begin and generally take place in political centers.
Monte
Aug 11 2024 at 7:36pm
To be sure, there have been instances of this, most notably, the Russian and Chinese Cultural revolutions. We can also include fascist Germany and various other military dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. To a much lesser extent, colonial/imperial powers and post-revolutionary democratic states. Can it be argued that our constitutional republic is unique in having established itself without resorting to terrorism?
I think the title to this post would have been more accurate and invited less commentary if it had instead read Terrorism as “The Essence of Totalitarian Government.
nobody.really
Aug 12 2024 at 3:26pm
In school I read that colonists would engage in tarring and feathering British loyalists. Wikipedia describes this as public torture. The threat of mob violence inflicting pain and humiliation was designed to intimidate British officials. Sounds like terrorism to me.
Monte
Aug 12 2024 at 5:31pm
The things you’re describing were more or less forms of social and political intimidation, which differs dramatically from what we traditionally define as terrorism. Further, they were aimed at specific individuals (British loyalists and officials) rather than a broader strategy of terrorizing the general population.
Time and context are important here. To try and draw a parallel between the American Revolution and its aftermath to those in countries like Russia, China, and fascist Germany is dubious, at best.
Mactoul
Aug 13 2024 at 12:21am
Pierre Lemieux:
And how do you get to differentiate a convention (which needs to be cherished) from a stifling custom (which needs to be eradicated)?
Indeed, in the old books, laws are just customs. They speak of laws of Persians, laws of Hebrews etc. And as for force, you simply have no example of any society at any degree of civilization that didn’t rely on force.
All the examples of medieval this or that hide something in plain sight. These societies were very much maintained by force.
The fundamental point as I see it, the role of state in defining private property is held by Milton Friedman himself:
(Talk at International Society for Individual Liberty, 1999)
Jon Murphy
Aug 13 2024 at 9:02am
David Hume and Adam Smith wrote a lot about this. More recently, the philosopher David Lewis wrote extensively about convention verus stifiling custom. Basically, a convention is generally agreed upon (even if not universally liked) to help solve some sort of coordination problem.* A convention (or custom) becomes stifiling when it no longer serves that purpose and, indeed, may actively prevent coordination from occuring.
Take two examples: driving and prohibition of homosexual relationships.
What side of the road to drive on is entirely conventional. If there were no convention, car accidents would be much higher than they are. So, the convention of driving on the left or right arose to help coordinate expectations when driving. Nothing stifiling there.
But what about the prohibition on homosexual relationships? At least in the Western World, that prohibition is rooted in ancient law from Leviticus. At the time Leviticus was written, that prohibition makes sense and was likely conventional: the Isrealites had just escaped Egypt. They were trying to build their population and establish a nation as they wandered in hostile lands. Back then, marriage was more about procreation rather than love. The coordination problem was how to find suitable spouses to create and raise a population. Fast forward thousands of years, and that coordination is no longer a problem. Consequently, the role of marriage has changed, from procreation to love. The convention against homosexual relationships no longer makes sense and, indeed, has become stifiling.
*That is not to say that conventions only solve coordination problems. Rather, it is a way to analyze them.
Mactoul
Aug 13 2024 at 8:55pm
But who decides when a convention should be maintained or should be eradicated?
Each individual? But customs and conventions are social matters.
The community as a whole? Then you have the state and the laws.
Jon Murphy
Aug 14 2024 at 6:37am
Often there isn’t a conscious choice made. Rather, it’s the result of the interactions of people. It’s a constant evolutionary process of human interaction. When old ways no longer serve goals, people search out and develop new ways. We’re an amazingly creative bunch.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 14 2024 at 5:14pm
Mactoul: Each individual, of course. He will stop following the convention if it does not appear useful (on net) to him. In a free society, “social matters” are matters of interindividual interactions (and not of authorities’ diktats). This is true whether we are speaking of a stateless society like de Jasay or a free society with a state like Buchanan and Tullock. One way or another, stopping to follow a convention among those that are supported by law will of course be more costly for an individual than stopping to follow a purely moral one.
You may find Chapter 12 of de Jasay’s Against Politics useful. Its title: “Conventions: some thoughts on the economics of ordered anarchy.” Chapter 2 of Buchanan’s The Limits of Liberty (“The Bases for Freedom in Society”) is useful too but perhaps more technical.
Mactoul
Aug 13 2024 at 11:57pm
I am afraid you have too limited exposure to the Third World where people break this too-obvious convention of driving on the correct side of the road (even if backed by the full force of law) for trivial but immediate convenience ALL THE TIME.
On more general grounds, you have customs (stifling or not) in tribal societies, conventions in a conventional society like Victorian England. But under anarchism people are encouraged to be individuals, to be unconventional and so on, And you may find yourself without any generally accepted convention.
As for the homosexuality, I believe you confound two very different things, homosexual acts and homosexual marriage. Leviticus prohibits homosexual acts. Ancient Greece approved of homosexual acts but still had no concept of homosexual marriage. So, it is misleading to talk of homosexual marriage being prohibited. It was not prohibited for the simple reason that the very concept of homosexual marriage did not exist.
If you would study the history of homosexual marriage movement, you will find that this concept was introduced explicitly to destroy the (stifling) custom of marriage
Jon Murphy
Aug 14 2024 at 6:44am
Individualism exists outside of anarchism, too. So, this supposed problem would exist regardless.
Although I am quick to point out that your claim is empirically incorrect. Humans interact with each other in a myriad of different ways in an anarchist setting, yet conventions arise and persist. Indeed, the historical evidence we have indicates conventions (and subsequently law) predate governments. Indeed, governments are one such convention. Convention in an anarchist setting is a necessary condition for the formation of a state.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 14 2024 at 5:48pm
Mactoul: You write:
I think this is an important point. The people you are referring to have not been accustomed to follow conventions that are in their own interests, which is why they are forced to submit to arbitrary political power. And this is why inteed they are in the third world. And they are oppressed ALL THE TIME. Fortunately, in the West, a spontaneous order developed that incorporated the acceptance of certain conventions (notably property and reciprocity). Recall how, in The Limits of Liberty, Buchanan insists that if conventions of free speech are not followed, they will be replaced by compulsory legal rules.
What are the basic rules that are essential to the maintenance of a free society is, I think, the main issue addressed by Buchanan, Hayek, and de Jasay. The distinction between, on the one hand, the rules that are merely conventional (language, étiquette, most behavior towards others) and, on the other hand, those that are recognized as laws (often evolved through conventions) because they are essential to the maintenance of a free society (“thou shall not kill”) seems to be what you are grappling for. Just grapple at the right places! (This blog is one of those places.)
nobody.really
Aug 15 2024 at 3:41pm
Pierre Lemieux:
Somewhat off-topic: Which rules of free speech are merely convention and which are necessary for the maintenance of a free society? On campus, left-wing people shout down speakers and seek to have them disinvited. On the right wing, some people favor burning books. All of this stikes me as an inexcusable affront to the norms of free speech.
But perhaps this reaction merely reflect my antiquated sensibilities? When I raise my objections, my kids roll thier eyes as if I were complaining that they are too scantily clad becasue they’re wearing sandals.
At no point in history has it been easier to share a message over the internet, or to self-publish a book, all the efforts of protesters notwithstanding. Thus, acts that in the past reflected an actual effort to suppress speech may, today, be understood as an act OF speech–expressing a person/group’s disagreement with a speaker/author without actually impeding anyone’s ability to learn what the speaker/author has to say. Among the placards opposing someone coming to speak on campus, perhaps protesters should include one that says “No actual speech was suppressed in the making of this protest.”
The principle of free speech remains. But perhaps the conventions change.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 20 2024 at 10:10pm
Nobody: A convention is a spontaneous rule that has emerged to coordinate individual actions in a society. Many classical liberals, from David Hume to Friedrich Hayek, have emphasized the importance of such rules. Certainly, in conformity with your first paragraph, not coercively preventing people to express their opinions on a piece of property that they have the right to use is a fundamental rule. The reason is that otherwise there would be perpetual conflict (or the reign of Leviathan) and a free society would be impossible. Two books I have recommended to you (and anybody listening) in the conversation following another post, one from Buchanan and one from de Jasay, may help you better understand. Just the first few pages of Chapter 2 of Buchanan’s The Limits of Liberty put the reader on the right track (although the book gets technical at certain junctures).
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