ars libertatis

Welt am Sonntag: Sie plädieren seit geraumer Zeit für die Selbstabschaffung der Politik, weil sie in den Bürgern defizitäre Mängelwesen sieht, die zu erziehen sind. Sind Sie ein Utopist? Oder eher ein Anarchist?

Sprenger: Jeder Mensch, der sich und seine Aufgabe ernst nimmt, ist ein Anarchist. Anarchie, das wird oft vergessen, wurde von Immanuel Kant definiert als das freiwillige und regelgeleitete Zusammenleben der Menschen. Freiwillig und regelgeleitet – in diesem Sinne bin ich also Anarchist. Und wer heute kein Utopist ist, ist krank.

Welt am Sonntag: Beschreiben Sie Ihre Utopie.

Sprenger: Auch wenn es paradox klingt: Je globaler unsere Welt, desto weniger funktioniert Großraumpolitik. Die EU war in dieser Hinsicht – nicht in allen! – ein Schritt in die grotesk falsche Richtung: kulturell naiv, historisch blind und anthropologisch ignorant. Die Ideen vom “guten Leben” realisieren sich im Kleinen, im Lokalen. Die Bürger vor Ort wissen selbst am besten, was gefördert und was verhindert werden soll. Meine Sympathie gehört daher den kleinen, weitgehend autonomen Einheiten. Vor allem aber brauchen wir mehr Wettbewerb auf Länderebene. Denn Wettbewerb ist nicht nur das beste Verfahren, um herauszufinden, was Menschen wollen – er ist das einzige Verfahren. Bis hin zur Möglichkeit des “Opting out”.¹

1. “Ohne Utopie ist man krank” – Warum sollte sich NRW nicht von der Bundesrepublik trennen? Fragt Management-Berater Reinhard Sprenger [↩]

Der gemeinsame Nenner der Libertären ist wohl das Nichtaggressionsprinzip. (Freilich gibts es Libertäre, die das NAP (un)bewusst verletzen, insbesondere die Minarchisten. Aber das ist eine andere Geschichte.) D.h. jeder ist libertär, der die Initiierung von Gewalt illegitim findet.

Der Pazifist hingegen hält nicht nur die Initiierung von Gewalt für illegitim, sondern ist gegen jegliche Ausübung von Gewalt, auch wenn sie nur der Selbstverteidigung dient. Das heisst aber zugleich, dass der Pazifist im obigen Sinne libertär ist.

Es lässt sich also schliessen, dass zwar viele Libertäre keine Pazifisten sind, Pazifisten aber zwangsläufig Libertäre sind. Man kann sogar noch einen Schritt weiter gehen und feststellen, dass Pazifisten zugleich auch Anarchisten sind und den freien Markt befürworten müssen (Auch wenn ihnen eine sozialistische Gesellschaft lieber wäre, so können sie höchstens versuchen, andere von ihren Ideen zu überzeugen. Eine Allianz mit den etatistischen oder revolutionären Sozialisten muss ihnen jedoch verboten sein.).

I have been ruminating recently on what are the crucial questions that divide libertarians. Some that have received a lot of attention in the last few years are: anarcho-capitalism vs. limited government, abolitionism vs. gradualism, natural rights vs. utilitarianism, and war vs. peace. But I have concluded that as important as these questions are, they don’t really cut to the nub of the issue, of the crucial dividing line between us.

Let us take, for example, two of the leading anarcho-capitalist works of the last few years: my own For a New Liberty and David Friedman’s Machinery of Freedom. Superficially, the major differences between them are my own stand for natural rights and for a rational libertarian law code, in contrast to Friedman’s amoralist utilitarianism and call for logrolling and trade-offs between non-libertarian private police agencies. But the difference really cuts far deeper. There runs through For a New Liberty (and most of the rest of my work as well) a deep and pervasive hatred of the State and all of its works, based on the conviction that the State is the enemy of mankind. In contrast, it is evident that David does not hate the State at all; that he has merely arrived at the conviction that anarchism and competing private police forces are a better social and economic system than any other alternative. Or, more fully, that anarchism would be better than laissez-faire which in turn is better than the current system. Amidst the entire spectrum of political alternatives, David Friedman has decided that anarcho-capitalism is superior. But superior to an existing political structure which is pretty good too. In short, there is no sign that David Friedman in any sense hates the existing American State or the State per se, hates it deep in his belly as a predatory gang of robbers, enslavers, and murderers. No, there is simply the cool conviction that anarchism would be the best of all possible worlds, but that our current set-up is pretty far up with it in desirability. For there is no sense in Friedman that the State – any State – is a predatory gang of criminals.¹

1. Murray Rothbard – Do You Hate the State? [↩]

Both Rand and Tolkien, then, passionately tell their tales about freedom, but they resort to completely different aesthetics, and, in consequence, paint two entirely different pictures of the world, with different heroes and different challenges. Are those differences important? How do they affect the “moral” of the respective tales? Given that it is of utmost importance just what kind of story one tells, it is perhaps worthwhile to reflect upon the different world images depicted in Atlas Shrugged and The Lord of the Rings, comparing the characters of both narratives along with the predicaments they face, and asking the fundamental question, which of the two novels constitutes a better context, a better literary frame of reference for freedom and Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s idea of natural order?
[...]
Given the breadth and length of both novels, the comparison of Atlas Shrugged and The Lord of the Rings could go on much longer, revealing many new themes and interpretations. It seems, however, that even the few differences sketched above allow for a tentative answer to the questions raised in the introduction. As much as Ayn Rand’s novel, with its strictly modernist message, could have been at some point in the past an effective remedy against the plagues of socialism and collectivism, the world described in it does not fit today’s reality and does not help in introducing the idea of natural order. Today, it is no longer necessary to protect big business from people. On the contrary, it is people who need protection from big business, which now goes hand in hand with Leviathan in trying to create a homogenous and completely atomized society.

The Lord of the Rings shows not only the great danger associated with all attempts to defeat evil power by power, but it also teaches that collectives do not really exist, that every one of us is the hero of his own individual story, and that law and order can easily exist without the state. Despite its egoistic message, Atlas Shrugged is full of imperatives to act, to fight, to bring salvation. Rand’s characters suffer not only because the state reaches into their wallets, but because the society rejected their rational, “enlightened” vision of what is good and right.

Tolkien, on the other hand, disliked such imperatives. He hated the outlook that if something can be done, it has to be done, and once even admitted that the greatest deeds of mind and spirit are born in abnegation.[16] That is most likely the reason his characters do not look for great challenges, nor wish to change the world, and instead live quietly, fulfilling Voltaire’s dictum Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

This is what makes The Lord of the Rings a much better means for conceptualizing the ideas of freedom than Atlas Shrugged. Reading Tolkien helps realize that, even after the “end of history,” the world and society can move in the direction of Merry Old England rather than a soulless homogenized mass of atoms. Moreover, The Lord of the Rings conveys an extremely important and optimistic message, namely that a plurality of many different cultures, languages, societies and visions, all existing together, yet separate and independent of each other, is still viable — not in a democratic regime, but in the new world of Hoppean natural order.¹

—–

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) – or to ‘unconstitutional’ monarchy . . . Anyway, the proper study of man is anything but man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity. And at least it is done only to a small group of men who know who their master is. The medievals were only too right in taking nolo episcopari as the best reason a man could give to others for making him a bishop. Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers. And so on down the line. But, of course, the fatal weakness of all that — after all only the fatal weakness of all good things in a bad corrupt unnatural world — is that it works and has worked only when all the world is messing along in the same good old inefficient human way.

~ John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

1. Juliusz Jablecki – Tales of Titans and Hobbits [↩]

When is it permissible for self-described anarchists (let’s restrict ourselves here to anarcho-capitalists) to take government money?
[...]
Can anarcho-capitalist economists take teaching posts at State schools? After all, the State intervenes heavily in education, which is a perfectly laudable market institution. But surely there are more teaching posts because of the State than there otherwise would be. Does the an-cap professor have to estimate whether his or her post would actually exist in the absence of State intervention, or is that irrelevant?

Personally, I have decided that I will never work for an official State school. If I really mean it when I refer (in LRC articles, for example) to the State as “a gang of killers and thieves,” then how can I possibly associate with such people? Yes yes, there are millions of analogies and counterarguments, but for me there is a definite line to be drawn at actually being on the payroll. (I also wouldn’t take welfare, for example, even though in previous years I have put in a lot to the tax system.)¹

1. Robert Murphy – Should Anarchists Take State Money? [↩]

Ein wunderbarer Artikel von Murray Rothbard über eine staatlose Gesellschaft und darüber, wie die Rechtssprechung funktionieren würde. Rothbard zeigt auf, dass ein makrtwirtschaftliches Rechtssystem nicht nur funktionieren würde, sondern sehr viel wünschenswerter und gerechter wäre als das etatistische, monopolistische Rechtssystem, das es heute gibt.

…in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
[...]
What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
[...]
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.

How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful.¹

1. Murray N. Rothbard – Society without a State [↩]

Es ist eine selten scheussliche Angelegenheit, Leute mit vorgehaltener Waffe dazu zu zwingen, einen Krieg (in der Schweiz: den Kauf von militärischem Gerät) finanziell zu unterstützen. Was geschieht: Entscheidet sich eine Nation (hat es jemals eine Volksabstimmung darüber gegeben, ob die Landestruppen jetzt in den echten Einsatz kommen?), in den Krieg zu ziehen, so wird ein Teil der Steuergelder natürlich zur Finanzierung ebendieses Krieges gebraucht. Anders ausgedrückt: Diese Kugel, die gerade eben den Kopf eines Kindes durchbohrt hat, wurde womöglich mit deinem Geld gekauft.
Aber vermutlich muss man solche Übel in Kauf nehmen, will man in einem Staat leben.

hat tip to (und absolut sehenswertes Video von) Crispin Sartwell

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 also I 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.

~ Henry David Thoreau

I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual.

~ Murray Rothbard

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.

~ Charles Bukowski

Hans-Hermann Hoppe:

“…the anarchistic upshot of the libertarian doctrine appealed to the countercultural left. For did not the illegitimacy of the state…imply that everyone was at liberty to choose his very own nonaggressive lifestyle? Did this not imply that vulgarity, obscenity, profanity, drug use, promiscuity, pornography, prostitution, homosexuality, polygamy, pedophilia or any other conceivable perversity or abnormality, insofar as they were victimless crimes, were no offenses at all but perfectly normal and legitimate activities and lifestyles?”¹

Hoppe konstruiert hier eine künstliche Norm und will diese Norm für alle Menschen verbindlich erklären. Leute, die einen davon abweichende Lebensstil praktizieren (möchten), sollen aus der Gesellschaft ausgeschlossen werden:

“the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism-will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.”¹

Hoppe zeigt sich also als Befürworter des “sozialen Konservatismus” und betrachtet (unter anderem) die (als traditionell wahrgenommene) Familie mit Vater, Mutter, Kind als zentrale Stütze der Gesellschaft. Er mag seine Gründe für diese Ansicht haben, aber dieses Gesellschaftsmodell als natürlich zu bezeichnen, würde Ignoranz gegenüber der menschlichen Natur bedeuten. Der Mensch ist keineswegs ein monogames, heterosexuelles Wesen. Er bevorzugt auch die klassische Familie gegenüber anderen Formen des Zusammenlebens nicht zwingend.
Um die Natur des Menschen zu erkunden, steht uns ein wunderbares Anschauungsmodell zur Verfügung: Der Schimpanse. Wir sind derart eng verwandt, dass wohl keine fundamentalen Unterschiede bezüglich unseres sozialen Verhaltens existieren. An Schimpansen sieht man gut, dass Homosexualität² und der Konsum psychoaktiver Substanzen³ nicht widernatürlich sind. Von Hoppe als abnorm bezeichnetes sexuelles Verhalten findet sich bei (überraschend?) vielen Arten⁴. Kannibalismus und Kindsmord sind bei Schimpansen ebenfalls anzutreffen⁵⁶.

Für die Moral sollte man also ein anderes Fundament finden als die Natur des Menschen. Durch Beobachten des menschlichen Verhaltens (Unter Berücksichtigung des Verhaltens anderer Tier- und insbesondere Affenarten.) findet man keine Antwort auf die Frage, wie sich der Mensch verhalten sollte.

1. Hans-Hermann Hoppe [↩] [↩]
2. n-tv – “Wider die Natur?” [↩]
3. newscientist – The chimpanzee’s medicine chest: Chimps seem to dose themselves with drugs when they are feeling low. Plants with the power to do chimps good may have potential for treating human disorders, too [↩]
4. wikipedia – Animal sexual behaviour [↩]
5. ncbi – Infant killing and cannibalism in free-living chimpanzees. [↩]
6. softpedia – Female Chimps Practice Heavily Infanticide and Cannibalism [↩]

Egal ob Demokratie oder Monarchie, einen Staat schätzen wir immer nur dann, wenn uns die Herrschenden wohlgesonnen sind und das tun, was wir für moralisch richtig halten. Jedes etatistische System ist abhängig davon, dass “gute” Leute an den Schalthebeln der Macht sind. Jeder Bush-, Nixon-, Blocher-, Calmy-Rey- und Clinton-Gegner weiss, wie viel Unheil ein “schlechter” Präsident oder Bundesrat anrichten kann.
Schlechte Präsidenten sind also ein Grundproblem der Demokratie. Die Lösung, die uns Etatisten vorschlagen, besteht darin, gute Präsidenten zu wählen. Die Geschichte lernt uns, dass stets wieder grottenschlechte Politiker zum Staatsoberhaupt gewählt werden. In einer Demokratie zu leben und dieses System zu befürworten, bedeutet also auch, derartige Präsidenten zu akzeptieren. Die andere Möglichkeit ist, wenn man sich nicht mit Präsidenten wie Bush zufrieden geben möchte, auf den besseren Menschen zu warten, der keine kriegslüsterne, paranoide Politiker wählt. Doch ist das nicht ein wenig utopisch, ein wenig illusorisch?
Besonders, wenn man bedenkt, dass jene Leute, die Gefallen an all dieser Macht, dieser Kontrolle über andere Menschen, finden, vermutlich nicht die “good guys” sind. Denn wenn man eine Gesellschaft hat, in der es viele gute Leute hat und ein paar “bad guys”, die andere ausnutzen wollen und auch nicht vor Gewalt zurück schrecken, und nun ein System mit einem Gewaltmonopol kreiert, welches sicher stellen soll, dass der einfache Bürger (im Gegensatz zum Polizisten oder Soldaten) keine Gewalt anwendet, was werden die “bad guys” tun? Werden sie nicht versuchen, auf die Seite des Gewaltmonopols zu gelangen und werden sie, um dies zu erreichen, die Wähler nicht schamlos belügen?

Die anarchistische Lösung dieses Problems sieht so aus, dass man dem Staat so wenig Macht zugesteht, dass dieser diese nicht missbrauchen kann. Doch solange Macht vorhanden ist, kann man sicher sein, dass diese irgendwann einmal dazu benutzt wird, anderen Leuten Schaden zuzufügen. Das heisst, Machtmissbrauch kann nur ausgeschlossen werden, wenn keine Macht vorhanden ist. Entweder man nimmt den Machtmissbrauch hin und bleibt ein Befürworter der Demokratie oder man sucht nach anderen Lösungen.

The Anarchist argument is simple. If people are good, then we don’t need a government to enforce morality. If people are evil, then the people composing government are also evil, and being in government have the power to exploit others much more fully than a private individual could. If some people are good, and some people are evil, then we should desire very much to remove any concentration of power, since such a concentration would attract people who wish to control others- evil people- and give them that control.
[...]
Anarchists want to remove centralized authority and hierarchies of power: in short, those processes that evil people can use to exploit others most easily, those processes that create war, generalized crime, chaos and oppression.¹

1. Check Your Premises – Statism is utopian. [↩]