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I would like to translate and share some articles by Miguel Anxo Bastos, Spanish libertarian (paleo) and political scientist, who converted me from normie to AnCap.
He's really good at debunking Statist myths and read a lot of books about the topic. Specially, I want to debunk that Objectivist myth about separating State and economy.
“It is the executioner, not the State, who materially carries out the execution of the criminal. Only the meaning attributed to the act transforms the executioner’s conduct into an act of the State.”
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, Unión Editorial, Madrid, 1995, p. 51.
Paraphrasing the title of what I consider to be Stuart Mill’s best work, I would like to discuss in this and other articles several issues that deserve greater clarification regarding the functioning of the State and the doctrine of free-market anarchism.
The first issue to be discussed is which people make up the entity we call the State. One of the main features of the Austrian School—though not exclusively of it, since authors such as Max Weber, James Buchanan, or John Rawls also subscribe to the thesis—is so-called methodological individualism; that is, the idea that only individuals act consciously and purposefully. Only facts referring to individuals can explain social and economic phenomena. This is a defining trait of the Austrian School and common to all its authors, whether they are classical liberals, conservatives, minarchists, or anarchists. To assume the contrary would imply understanding that collectives (classes, nations, companies, churches, etc.) have a will independent of the individuals who identify with them. It would also mean that these collectives can have interests of their own, distinct from those of the individuals who compose them. If this were the case, collectives would also have material or spiritual needs different from those of their members, which I find hard to believe. When Fidel Castro visited Galicia, he arrived representing the Republic of Cuba, but the one who ate good seafood, drank good wine, and slept in a good hotel was Fidel’s physical body, not the body of the Cuban State.
The idea that the collective has interests distinct from those of individuals is called collectivism and normally assumes that the interest of the collective stands above individual interest. The issue, as posed by von Bertalanffy, Rapoport, and other theorists of so-called General Systems Theory, is that in certain cases the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and the human body and its cells are used as a metaphor. I do not consider this a good analogy. First, cells do not know that they are cells and cannot change their condition; they are not conscious agents—that is, the cells that make up a neuron cannot one day decide they are bored with being in the brain and seek adventure by transforming themselves into sperm cells. Human beings do know what they are and can change their condition or attempt to do so. Second, it is a potentially dangerous analogy because the human body can sacrifice some cells for the interest of the collective, but the political body cannot do so without incurring grave injustice (although this has indeed happened and has been justified in collectivist regimes). This analogy, like those of beehives and anthills, has always been widely used in all kinds of totalitarian regimes (the first chapter of Utopia and Revolution, by Melvin Lasky, offers many examples). Third, the claim that the whole is more than the parts—that the whole is more handsome, taller, more intelligent than the parts—is never clearly defined or explained. I suppose it refers to the fact that coordinated human beings can do things they cannot do separately. This is obviously correct, for example, in building airports or pyramids. What has not yet been demonstrated is why such coordination must be carried out through force and punishment, and why state coordination for accomplishing things is better than market coordination or voluntary coordination through ideas. Nor have the reasons been demonstrated that imply that coordination on the scale of the State (States have a political, not economic, logic, and come in many sizes and forms) is the best possible. Another problem is who defines the interest of the collective; here I fear that not all members enjoy equivalent weight. Normally, the expression of the collective will corresponds to that of the dominant individuals within it.
The will of Cuba, for example, ends up being the will of Raúl Castro; and that of Spain, that of Rajoy—assuming these two politicians are the key actors. What can be confusing is that sometimes the expressed will is not that of those who nominally hold positions of power, but of actors hidden behind the scenes, as happened in China with Deng Xiaoping: he ruled even though nominally he was nothing; but in any case, it was the decision of people, not of the forces of history or the interest of China. China’s interest was whatever he said it was. Another example: the Iraq war was sold as being in Spain’s interest, and its withdrawal was also sold as such. Did Spain change its mind, or did its leaders change? I certainly did not hear the voice of that superior being called Spain complaining.
The foregoing reasoning applies not only to States, but also to corporations, classes, humanity itself (as cosmopolitans do), or even to nature, which also seems to be endowed with these attributes according to some environmental thinkers. When I studied Marxism at university, I was told that the interest of the working class lay in social ownership of the means of production. And I wondered when workers had been consulted as to whether that was their interest, or whether it was cooperativism or even capitalism. I discovered that they had never been consulted; rather, it had been Karl Marx’s decision. Speaking in the name of a collective or a being that has no ontological existence (and therefore cannot contradict us) is an old trick already used in the times of the Assyrians and the pharaohs, and I observe that it still enjoys many unconditional followers.
This preamble is meant to point out that what we call States are nothing more than groups of people organized to obtain rents, power, and status at the expense of extracting them from the rest of society. This is not the place to refer to the origin of political power, which basically arises from the conquest by some violent group of an already settled population—the famous theory of super-stratification. This violent collective decides to exploit the dominated group economically and elaborates some kind of theoretical justification to legitimize its domination. This process is better explained in books such as Oriental Despotism by Karl Wittfogel, Freedom and Domination; A Historical Critique of Civilization by Alexander Rüstow, or The State by Frank Oppenheimer, among many dozens of other works, so I will not dwell on it here. The question to be asked is how the original bands of bandits or their descendants (many current monarchs descend from those primitive marauders, such as the Queen of England, who descends from William the Conqueror) coordinate themselves to achieve such domination over subjugated populations. A fact not easy to detect is that these groups of marauders or conquerors function among themselves in an anarchic manner, just as they do with other similar bands. Indeed, anarchy exists within what Gaetano Mosca called the political class and among political classes. There is anarchy within the State and anarchy among States, and both are reasonably stable, in the style of a Nash equilibrium. Moreover, it is very likely that if they were not anarchic, they could not function due to lack of information, and the system of States would collapse. Just as socialist States could exist because they relied on non-socialist price systems internally and externally, systems of States can exist because internally they are not fully statist.
Let me explain. In the international sphere I will not dwell much, because authors such as Hedley Bull (The Anarchical Society
With all this, what I mean to say is that anarchy already exists in the political sphere; that this anarchy is reasonably stable is what allows governments to survive, and therefore it is not a utopia or something strange and fanatical; that this anarchy has evolved over time, in parallel with society, and has become very sophisticated in its methods of domination. Therefore, those who govern us and extract rents from us (by force and with sophisticated theoretical arguments) are people like us, self-governing themselves in anarchy. So, what is radical or fanatical about asking what titles or rights these people have to govern us, supposedly to free us from that anarchy in which they themselves already live and flourish?
I understand that the debate on anarcho-capitalism is distorted by the question of its possibility or impossibility. It is obvious that anarchy is possible, as demonstrated by most of human history (I do not believe that the time during which we have been governed by some kind of entity endowed with political power amounts to even 10% of history, and much less by States, whose existence as such is probably not much more than 300 years old), as well as by the contemporary survival of stateless peoples, such as some remote tribes in Africa, in the Americas, or on Pacific islands.
The debate should be a different one: whether someone could decide to live outside the State, assuming the consequences; and whether this would or would not be allowed, and for what reasons. That is, suppose a few ancaps and I decided to buy land in some unpopulated area of Spain, for example, in order to live there in an anarcho-capitalist way, doing so consciously, knowing its possible advantages and hypothetical disadvantages, including a lower standard of living or the supposed inability to establish justice and defense on our own. It would, in any case, be our problem—but would we be allowed to do so?
They would quickly say that this cannot be allowed and that we would have to submit to the common laws that we supposedly gave ourselves. Or that within the framework of Spain there can be no ancap secessions, since it is one and indivisible. And we would be prevented by force. But what they would actually be doing is applying violence against a group of people who bother no one and who simply want to live in peace while respecting the right of others to live governed by whatever form of State they choose. They could not allow it because if the voluntariness of relationships is accepted, then we cannot speak of a State, but rather of a voluntary association.
This argument was widely used in its time to show the moral superiority of capitalism over socialism, since the former would allow the existence of socialist communities, whereas socialism could not allow them without collapsing itself. I believe the same ethical argument can be used in the debate between anarchism and minarchism. The minarchist can never tolerate the existence of anarchist communities or territories within his system without undermining his own argument.
Ethical argumentation in the debate between these two ideal forms of society has never been particularly appreciated by minarchists, since it essentially leads them to discuss the ultimate legitimacy of the State, as well as to question its origin and essence. In this arena they do not defend themselves very well, since their ultimate reason is force against those who do not share their principles. They are more comfortable in the utilitarian debate, which they focus on the supposedly better functioning of statism in certain areas of social life, at least in what they call security and what they call justice. Their typical arguments are that a State that provides services as a monopoly in these areas is better than a system in which those areas are provided without monopoly.
Here, however, minarchists suddenly seem to become Marxists or Ricardians and forget the theory of subjective value. Minarchy is good or better only for the minarchist. The anarchist may well want or prefer the costs and benefits of anarchy to living under the domination of people to whom he recognizes no legitimate title to rule him. And that may perfectly well be his preference, and therefore minarchy may not be the best option for him. The question is why the minarchist has to force the anarchist, by violence, to adopt his taste.
This has to do with the fact that goods such as defense or justice are clearly subjective goods. There is no such thing as defense or justice in the abstract; rather, both are subjective needs of individuals, which require human and material means to be satisfied like any other human need. People value their security in an absolutely subjective way. Some value it very highly and feel insecure everywhere, and therefore buy all kinds of means to satisfy it. Others value risk and volunteer for wars or practice high-risk sports. Some consider certain groups potentially dangerous and others do not. Nor is there agreement on how to deal with security, hence the hawks who demand force and the doves who preach peace and negotiation. Any monopolistic definition of security will satisfy some and leave a large part of the population dissatisfied.
The same is largely true of justice. What is just for some is not just for others, nor is there agreement on what is or should be a crime, or what punishment should be imposed. Thus, the justice codes—criminal or civil—of different countries in the world can interpret the same acts in very different ways: considering them crimes or not and treating them very differently. A monopolistic justice code could only achieve inequality before the law, which is what actually happens (if justice were truly equal before the law, it would be irrelevant to have a good or a bad lawyer, and therefore the serious study of law would be unnecessary). Only a system of justice under anarchy could, through competition between jurisdictions, coordinate the legal framework and limit, insofar as possible, inequality in access to justice, in the same way that inequalities in the valuation of goods are coordinated through the price system.
Another aspect often avoided in the debate is that of scale in the provision of goods or services that require collective action. We are accustomed to the provision of many services at the state level—not only justice or security, but also transportation or even services such as electricity, telephone, or water—so we are told that these would be very difficult to provide in the absence of some central entity that provides or regulates their use. We even imagine an anarchic society as one at the scale of current States, only without a government. In reality, there would be many plural associations, with different scales for the provision of each specific service. We would associate in one way to have an airport, in another for schools, in another for shops, in another to build roads, and so on. In real life this already happens in countless areas, and there are even organizations such as Switzerland with overlapping administrations by function. The model would simply have to be extended to all functions.
For some goods we would associate on a planetary scale, for others on a continental scale, others at a regional level, others locally, and some at an individual scale. There would be no place, however, for the current monopolies based on the geographic or demographic scale of existing States, which, as we can easily intuit, have no rational scale at all, since their form and demography depend on historical accidents rather than on any rational design for service provision. Proof of this is that there are recognized States ranging from ten thousand inhabitants to 1.6 billion. Small States simply subcontract the services they cannot or do not wish to provide to companies or other States. The scale of States does not suffice to guarantee all services and, in fact, treaties are concluded (in anarchy) with external actors to provide them (including mutual defense treaties). What then prevents small stateless communities from entering into such agreements with other communities, companies, or individuals? I would like to know the answer, and also why some people are so interested in preventing such communities from existing.
Huemer rightly points out that the first anarchic communities will appear in the way I mentioned at the beginning: in very civilized and peaceful places that would allow the existence of free organizations without being attacked. In principle, anarchist communities and States could coexist without problem, each in its own place, and then we would see which works better, with the resulting imitation. I do not understand the logic of wanting to prevent such coexistence and letting each person choose. Or rather, I do understand it: the State would disappear by becoming optional. And that is something statists are not willing to allow.
More than forty years ago, Robert Nozick proposed in his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Editorial Innisfree, 2014) the possibility of an ultraminimal state, responsible only for the provision of security and justice services, leaving all other functions— including social assistance and infrastructure— in the hands of the market or civil society. His thesis, explained very briefly, is that if the supply of defense and security services were left exclusively in private hands, dominant private agencies would soon emerge, impose themselves, and in turn become monopolists, thereby exploiting consumers of such services. Therefore, although he considered himself a libertarian, he acknowledged the need to reserve the monopoly of these services to the State, which, at least supposedly, could be controlled through institutions designed for that purpose. The ever-caustic Roy Childs wasted no time in labeling this proposal minarchism and its defenders minarchists. Ayn Rand had earlier expressed similar ideas, though scattered throughout her work and without the systematic treatment given by Nozick. Her followers—especially Tibor Machan—are nonetheless among the strongest defenders of this doctrine.
It is worth clarifying, before analyzing the viability of minarchism, that this proposal is radically new in political theory. It is true that historically there have been states limited in scope— that is, with low taxes and a relatively reduced level of intervention in the economy or society— but never states confined exclusively to these two functions. The United States, for example, enjoyed for a long time both low taxes and broad economic and social freedom, yet it maintained many other functions, such as monetary regulation, transportation infrastructure, and, timidly at first, compulsory education. That is, it exercised authority over many of the functions now provided by modern states, only then still underdeveloped, but with the evident possibility of expanding them in the future, as indeed occurred. The ideal of a small and limited state— the “5% State” proposed on some occasions by Professor Rallo— is the ideal of classical liberalism. It is a legitimate political position and can certainly be defended, but it has a problem: that of theoretically justifying state intervention in areas other than justice and defense. The defense of state intervention from socialist or social-democratic premises is well known, but I am not aware of liberal justifications for it. The minarchist knows this well and therefore justifies intervention only in those two areas; even so, I believe this defense presents problems.
The first, and not a minor one, is defining precisely what is meant by security or defense. Starting from a state justified solely on defense, one can construct a state at least as large as the current one— except that instead of justifying it on equality or public goods, it would be justified on the security needs of the population, understood loosely. For example, authors such as Barry Buzan or Ole Wæver, associated with the so-called Copenhagen School, and defense specialists such as Loch Johnson, defend state intervention to justify, for instance, food security or natural resource security in order to face conflict under adequate conditions. They also justify social and monetary policies to defend social stability and thus prevent internal unrest. The same applies to public healthcare in the name of population security against plagues or infections. The State should also supply necessary transportation infrastructure for security reasons, as well as control immigration within the country. Not to mention science or industry promoted in the name of the nation’s strategic interest. Nor would the regulation of the media escape such a definition. Almost any policy could be defined in terms of security. Something similar would occur with justice, especially if the adjective social were added to it.
The minarchist state based on justice and security could therefore be as large as the current one, unless security and justice were strictly defined— yet I have not found a reasonably clear definition of the limits of either, nor of how much intervention and spending could be justified in their name. There are, in fact, no limits to intervention in these areas or to what can be spent on them. Any given amount would be arbitrary and would correspond to a particular definition of how such goods are provided. Would it be necessary to have nuclear submarines, fighter jets, and state-of-the-art tanks, or would light weapons suffice? Would prisons, forced labor, or fines be used to punish criminals? How much private defense or justice would be tolerated? Would arbitration and non-state forms of justice be allowed? These are questions I have not yet seen clearly defined in minarchist arguments.
Another problematic point is the spatial scope of minarchy— that is, how many minarchies would be admissible according to its theorists (a world state, current states, thousands of political units as in the thirteenth century…) and what the minimum scale would be for allowing them to exist.
This issue is relevant because Nozick’s minarchy would arise from a hypothetical anarchy, and therefore states would be constituted to eliminate the problem of aggression by a dominant agency. Nozick does not specify how large this agency would be from which the pristine minarchist state would emerge. I understand that many defenders of this doctrine conceive it as a reduction of currently existing states to a much lower level of intervention based solely on defense and justice— that is, reducing the current Spanish State to very small dimensions. But why should it have to be that way? We could imagine thousands of competing minarchies, with no numerical limit and with rights of secession like those of the municipalities of Liechtenstein, organized anarchically among themselves— which would resemble an anarcho-capitalist model more than Nozick’s proposal. Or would secession not be allowed, and would there be a single world state? This issue, too, has not been clarified in minarchist writings.
Finally, one must discuss the feasibility of achieving minarchy— that is, whether currently existing states could reduce their intervention and competencies to reach the desired ideal. Anarchy is often criticized as utopian, not without some reason— not so much because it is impossible, but because of the difficulty of reaching it from the current situation. It would be very difficult to convince the population to abandon a current situation in which, despite being oppressed by taxes and regulations, it enjoys a certain level of protection and welfare attributed to the State (erroneously, I believe, as we will analyze in another text), in exchange for a situation of anarchy whose outcomes are uncertain. And it would be even more difficult to convince rulers to voluntarily renounce their power peacefully. The transition to such a society therefore requires overcoming both public incredulity and governmental resistance. In any case, if it were to occur, it would be an ideological battle requiring a group of highly motivated and convinced initiators willing to spend time and resources and, in some cases, to sacrifice professional careers and even, in extreme cases, freedom or life itself. To achieve such a degree of motivation, the final result must compensate for the cost, and to facilitate coordination of action it must be endowed with a certain degree of precision. Irwin Schiff died in prison for refusing to pay any taxes, which he considered radically immoral. But I do not believe he would have borne the cost of that punishment if the reward had been merely a reduction in the corporate tax rate.
The long march toward minarchy faces problems similar to those of anarchy. Minarchists would also have to persuade the population to renounce current systems of social protection and labor regulation or to pay tolls on highways, for example, in order to adopt market mechanisms whose advantages are not immediately obvious. They would also have to overcome the resistance of current rulers, who I very much doubt would greet minarchist proposals with applause. In fact, one of the arguments used to criticize anarchism is that its proposals are perceived as too radical by most people, which discourages many from the struggle for freedom. I do not believe this. Minarchist proposals—though vague and imprecise—are also perceived as highly radical (one need only ask what opinion abolishing public education, healthcare, or pensions would deserve among much of the population). The minarchist objective is not described with precision and would likely provoke disputes over its scope when implemented— for example, over what percentage of taxation would be acceptable in a minarchist society. I do not doubt the courage of minarchists, many of whom are true and brave defenders of their ideal, but I do question their practical operability when it comes to mobilizing supporters. The struggle to abolish slavery was a struggle to abolish it completely, not to improve slaves’ diets. And in that struggle both goals were achieved, because slaveholders were forced to yield. Perhaps the best way to achieve minarchy is to demand anarchy. If what is sought are short-term improvements, that would most likely be the most consistent strategy.
One of the main stratagems of statism is the manipulation of language, especially language related to politics and economics. Renaissance princes hired poets, painters, architects, and sculptors to justify their rule and to sing of their deeds for posterity. The mural The Allegory of Good and Bad Government by the Lorenzetti brothers—which profaned the cathedral of Siena with its mythologized ideal of the common good—is a good example of this. Modern rulers, by contrast, have delegated the dirty work of justifying their actions to economists, political scientists, and sociologists. While much has been lost in terms of aesthetic beauty, much has been gained in conceptual effectiveness. The new justifications of the State claim to speak in the name of science, and among their tasks, as noted, is the modification of language. One of the main distortions consists in labeling certain goods or services as public, social, or strategic, in order subsequently to justify their provision by the State. Thus, services or goods historically provided privately come to be supplied under a monopolistic regime (either in their provision or in their regulation) by state (public) powers. Once defined in this way, it is claimed of some of them that only the State can provide them under adequate conditions. Security and defense services are a typical example.
The provision of any good or service requires human and material means and is always carried out at a given scale. The scale of provision depends on the type of service and on its quantity and quality. Therefore, there will be differences in provision both within the same service and among different services. Education, for example, may be provided at the individual level through private tutors, or collectively through videos posted online. Water services likewise range from a private well to a metropolitan supply system.
The only service that seems to escape this rule is state defense, whose sole form of provision appears to be that of a state-run defense service provided by the State itself. I therefore wish to raise some objections to the arguments that justify the existence of the State on the basis of an inescapable need for it to provide such services.
First, the very definition of the group to be defended is, in my view, a clear example of circular reasoning. According to this argument, the group to be defended consists of citizens subject to the government of people who proclaim themselves representatives of an imaginary being called the State. These people need to be defended from other people organized by another group that proclaims itself the legitimate representative of another imaginary entity (the fact that many people believe in something does not imply the ontological existence of that thing). That is, first we constitute a group (the State) out of individuals living anarchically, justifying it by defense needs; and then it is said that this group, once constituted in relation to defense, has defense needs as a group, since as such it is threatened and the threat is collective. In other words, now that it is a group, it needs to defend itself. This lacks much logic. The prior definition of the group as a community with defense needs therefore lacks justification, since by regression, how would the first group be justified if there were no previously organized attacker? On what logic is the group constituted if it can be constituted prior to the need for defense? The first aggressor group is therefore already an organized band, initially not very sophisticated and dedicated to aggression, and it needs no further theoretical justification than its desire for plunder. Bands of pillaging Huns, Avars, or Vikings at least had the decency not to pretend to offer a “scientific” or rational justification for their looting. They certainly did not call it public defense services. What many of the leaders of those groups did was attempt to prevent other bands from depriving them of their privilege of extracting rents from their subjects, and for that purpose they established armies or armed organizations. The atomic bombs possessed by North Korea, to cite an example of a contemporary band of bandits, are they meant to defend its people from the southern barbarians, or to allow the ruling class to continue exploiting its subjects?
Second, nothing is said about what the scale should be, or what minimum number of people is required to establish such a group. State defense is spoken of as if current states derived their existence from time immemorial and the scale of defense were always the present one. Today’s configuration of the state system owes its existence to wars, dynastic marriages, decolonization, or political partitions for religious or ideological reasons. But states have no rational scale for defense; defense is merely an ex post justification. There is no optimal scale for the provision of defense, nor can it even be assured that state defense services can guarantee it. Luxembourg could not defend itself against France, nor Togo against Nigeria, in the event of conflict. Not even larger states such as Iraq were able to defend themselves against more powerful states such as the United States. The United States, in turn, would face greater difficulties with Russia or China. By contrast, Luxembourg could defend itself against Liechtenstein, and Togo against Equatorial Guinea. Thus, we could affirm that the scale of defense can only be defined in relation to the type of enemy one faces. And defining who the enemy is is not easily objectifiable: ethnic, religious, or ideological factors contribute to defining the enemy, and for that very reason these definitions are changeable. For the afrancesados, Napoleon was a blessing, just as the Vietnamese invasion of Khmer Rouge Cambodia was for Cambodians. Spain and France have been allies on several occasions and enemies on as many others. Radical Islam went from being an ally in the fight against the Soviets to a mortal enemy today. What is valid for one type of enemy may not be valid for another if circumstances or perceptions of friendship or hostility change. Cuba went from being a nearly unarmed country before the revolution, since it had no enemies, to being heavily armed and even demanding nuclear missiles after the communist victory. New enemies also appear and disappear. Martin van Creveld, for example, in The Rise and Fall of the State, argues that the defense scale of most states is inadequate to meet challenges such as suicidal Islamist terrorism, modern mafias and gangs, or maritime piracy. That is, most actually existing states cannot fulfill their promise of defense, either because they are too large to confront small enemies or too small to provide such services. From this it may be deduced that the provision of defense services must necessarily be defined politically— that is, according to the interests of those who at any given moment hold state power. In this way, defense is a euphemism for designating a certain provision of services for the greater glory of those persons. Indeed, it is easily observable that security services are in many cases captured by special interests, from the so-called military–industrial complex—so well described by libertarians such as Seymour Melman (Pentagon Capitalism is a true masterpiece)—to certain companies that use them in their commercial relations to “facilitate” deals, to the military itself, which in many countries controls key economic sectors (the famous Turkish or Egyptian deep state), if it does not directly hold political power. All of them, of course, define these activities as necessary for national security or for the provision of indispensable services.
Finally, the provision of defense addresses only a small part of human needs for defense and security. Human beings need to defend themselves and be safe from many kinds of threats. Animals, viruses, cold, heat, earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods have killed far more human beings than humans have killed each other. For all these problems, markets have found effective solutions, such that casualties caused by humanity’s principal enemies have been minimized. Only aggression among humans seems to escape this logic. Yet even this aggression follows different logics. Being attacked by an individual or by small groups (for which the market also offers solutions) is not the same as being attacked by a large state army. The scale of the attack obviously requires different responses in each case. Nor is the subjective perception of risk the same for every person, so a different quality of provision—and therefore a different scale in service supply—will be required. If this is not done, we will have either overprotected individuals or poorly defended ones. In any case, a state defense service would not be appropriate. The only case in which state defense might be acceptable is when confronting large-scale aggression by large-scale organized forces such as those organized by states. But in this case, as we saw earlier, it is not true, first, that the best way to face such aggression is through another state organization (the French state was defeated by the Nazis and had to resort to guerrilla warfare, as occurred in Iraq, in Napoleonic Spain, and in numerous other cases); and second, we once again fall into circularity: we need a State to fight another State, and thus, by regression, how is the existence of the first State justified?
This essay has sought to point out that the definition of defense produced in monopoly by the State, not being easily scalable (if it were, it could not be defined as a public good that only the State can supply), cannot satisfy the defense needs of a population. In the same way that, for example, state education can produce only a small portion of a population’s educational needs and conceals an agenda of population control, in the case of defense the intention is much the same: it is nothing more than an ideological justification for the monopoly over certain means of violence (the most powerful ones) exercised by the ruling class.
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On many occasions, the appropriateness of debating utopian and unrealistic issues is questioned—something libertarians are very prone to doing. We are accused (often with reason) of neglecting the real world and devoting ourselves to theorizing about fantastic assumptions concerning future and ideal societies. But the truth is that all ideological systems were conceived and debated before being put into practice, and many ideas that seemed unreal at the time were eventually implemented. Hence the need to discuss them, either as an intellectual exercise that helps us clarify positions, or as something useful for perceiving deficiencies in the functioning of present institutions and for anticipating imagined futures.
One of these debates centers on what might occur in an anarcho-capitalist society in which the various functions of security and defense are provided wholly or partially by private companies. The libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick, the theoretical father of modern minarchism (although the term itself is owed to the irony of the anarcho-capitalist Roy Childs), proposed in his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia the possibility that one of these agencies might transform into a sort of dominant agency that would end up subjugating the other private protection agencies and, ultimately, would turn into a kind of State through the monopoly of violence. This is an interesting and well-founded objection that I would like to discuss here. Although it may seem like an unreal debate, it has precedents in the old disputes of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance about whether or not it was advisable to rely on mercenary troops for the protection of the various kingdoms and lordships that populated Europe at the time, given that one of the fears that haunted them was that such mercenaries might end up supplanting their “legitimate”¹ rulers. It is true that on some occasions such a phenomenon did occur, but a review of the history of the condottieri, such as that by Trease², shows first that it was far more frequent for rulers to deceive the condottieri and refuse to pay them for their services once the job was done—sometimes even poisoning or murdering them (they knew the techniques of power and deception better than the condottiero, who was nothing more than a hard-fighting warrior)—than the other way around. The case of the legendary Ruy Díaz de Vivar, El Cid Campeador, is a good and familiar example of a mercenary (he fought for Christians and Muslims alike in medieval Spain) deceived by a perfidious king. Once their leaders were eliminated, the troops usually dispersed, just as happens in many companies when they lack capable managers. Trease says that, in general, the behavior of mercenaries was angelic compared to that of the popes, kings, or lords who hired them. The history of the condottieri also shows that there were many ways to control the conduct of mercenaries, something at which the Venetians were masters: they hired them dozens of times and were never dominated by them. Hostages, pledges, dowries, or the hiring of several companies at once to counterbalance each other were among their techniques. They also sought to intermarry them with some of the city’s families to secure their loyalty. The fact is that in this kind of arrangement, it was almost always the mercenary who ran greater risks than the ruler. And I understand that the same would occur in the case Nozick proposes. Let us see why.
First, a society without a State, if it ever comes about, will do so in the future—that is, after a social evolution starting from the present moment. The reasons that might lead us to such a solution may be varied, but one cannot ignore the fact that in such a society a non-negligible percentage of the population would be familiar with anarcho-capitalist theories (otherwise it would be hard to explain how such a society could have developed). These people would quickly detect when a security agency of this kind was transforming into a proto-state and would most likely act accordingly. Knowledge of history would serve as a warning, and we would not suffer the fate of primitive peoples without history who found themselves dominated by States without quite knowing what awaited them, as the historian of the early State Henri Claessen aptly pointed out. Unlike what happened to our ancestors, we can effectively prevent the development of coercive institutions of this type. The possible emergence of predatory companies would occur among literate populations with a significant group of conscious individuals who are well connected to each other, not in societies lacking written history and incapable of communicating on a large scale. Presumably, these populations would not delegate all their security to such agencies, but would retain weapons for self-defense to guard against such a contingency, along the lines envisaged in the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, which advocates the freedom to bear arms in order to be able to defend oneself, if necessary, against abuses of power by the State.
Second, such companies would lack legitimacy to impose themselves over the dominated population. While it is true that the foundation of any political power is the use or credible threat of use of physical force against the governed, it is no less true that much of the States’ capacity to act derives from their ability to convince the population of the legitimacy of their rule. Without legitimacy, people would resist paying taxes and obeying orders, making the exercise of power more complicated and insecure. A company of this kind would find it difficult in the short term to obtain the acquiescence of the population and would encounter far more resistance than a State. I cannot imagine a coronation mass for an executive of Executive Outcomes, nor an oath to the flag of Securitas, nor crowds of young people swearing to give their lives for the good of Prosegur… nor do I think the executives of such companies would want that. They only seek to conduct their business peacefully, aspiring to nothing more than to provide a quality service. It is true that a company of this type could exercise power, but it would be power unanimously regarded as illegitimate and would very likely be resisted. One might counterargue with the example of the persistence over time of mafias or gangs and their apparent possession of certain elements of legitimacy, but I do not consider this a good example, since mafias have, curiously, always arisen in societies with a State. They are born in the shadow of the State, financed by trading in goods or services that States prohibit (drugs, alcohol, gambling, weapons, prostitution…), and benefiting from the price premium that prohibition generates. They thus conduct businesses subsidized by the State, and in some countries mafias and States are so intertwined that one could say they are the same thing. One protects legal businesses and the other illegal ones. They also carry out protection or extortion functions in places where the conventional State does not have enough force to impose itself, but does have enough to discourage legal protection businesses³. In any case, and contrary to what is often thought, mafias without the State would amount to very little, since their financing would be severely hampered by the lack of profitable businesses to engage in, thereby diminishing their ability to recruit members or acquire weaponry. In a society without a State, organizations of this kind, even if they existed, would hardly have the resources to impose themselves—especially with a civilian population willing to defend itself and equipped with effective means of defense.
Third, nowhere is it written what kind of space such a security company would dominate or what the scale of its dominion would be. We are accustomed, thanks to the maps we studied as children, to understanding territories of power as compact entities, when they need not be so. Where I live, one security company protects the university, another the banks, another the large shopping centers, and so on. That is, in a small space we can have several agencies competing. I myself can even hire several agencies at the same time, as the Venetians did, with different or overlapping functions. For example, if you have more than one insurance policy you will see how some events, such as travel assistance, may be covered multiple times. The same could happen with security agencies. If my neighbor hires one company for his security and I hire another, for one such agency to become dominant it would have to gradually expel rival agencies by force—but without having a compact space from which to start, and above all without having a reference as to where the boundary at which to stop should be. It is very difficult to initiate such a process without the other companies being alerted and without citizens realizing what is happening. I believe that most libertarians imagine society as the result of the dissolution of a State, but with the State still serving as the ultimate reference. That is, we imagine a Spanish Ancapistan as Spain without a State but with all the State’s reference points intact—so that Nozick’s dominant agencies would end up oppressing and monopolizing within Spanish territory. But Nozick does not determine what space such a dominant agency would have to occupy in order to be considered as such: Andorra’s? Portugal’s? The People’s Republic of China’s? The world’s?
Finally, defenders of Nozick’s argument should answer the question of why being dominated by a company would be worse than being dominated by a State. Nozick seems to take this so much for granted that he does not explain it, but I would like to know in what sense it would be worse. Would taxes be higher, for example? Professor Margaret Levi, in her magnificent Of Rule and Revenue⁴, explains how States extract taxes up to the maximum they can obtain in each circumstance. A company would presumably do the same, but it would have to consider amortization and the capitalization of taxes, so it would probably prefer—if its managers were good entrepreneurs—lower taxes in the short term in order to obtain greater revenues in the medium and long term. Would it force us to educate our children in its values? Would it dictate how Brussels sprouts should be handled or how olive oil should be served? Would it force us to insure ourselves with its insurance companies under its conditions? We cannot know this a priori, but I think it would be good to know before choosing between the two options and determining which would be preferable.
The arguments set out above are, obviously, political fiction, as are Nozick’s. But given that this author has elaborated such conclusive proposals about the future of an anarcho-capitalist society, I believe it is necessary to discuss them not only to anticipate possible future contingencies, but also to understand the present situation and to comprehend the nature of contemporary States.
¹ I put “legitimate” in quotation marks because if we study the history of such kingdoms we can observe that in many cases those who held power derived it from practices that were, shall we say, far from orthodox or peaceful, such as usurpations, crimes, or coups d’état.
² See Geoffrey Trease, The Condottieri: Soldiers of Fortune, Orbis, Barcelona, 1985.
³ In a recent conflict in Mexico between drug traffickers and neighborhood self-defense groups, the army hastened to disarm the neighbors, who—unwilling to have trouble with the justice system—allowed it. The traffickers, of course, remained armed.
⁴ Also of interest may be: Margaret Levi, “The Predatory Theory of Rule,” in Politics & Society 10(4), 1981, pp. 431–465.
In the previous article in this series we discussed the theory of monopoly as applied to security and defense services. In it we argued that within a given territory different security forces can coexist—and in fact do coexist—without necessarily coming into conflict with one another.
The first debate, therefore, concerns the scope of such a territory, which does not necessarily have to coincide with that of an actually existing state. Specialists in economies of scale such as Walter Adams or Seymour Melman argue that the optimal size of a firm, whether providing services or goods, does not usually coincide with the size of the states that host them. That is, it is perfectly possible to conceive of a plurality of producers or service providers within the same territorial area. In Spain, without going any further, there are several suppliers of electricity, telephony, water, and manufacturing plants whose scale does not coincide with Spain’s national boundaries. Certain supermarket chains can perfectly well serve, for logistical reasons, the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula and Portugal; others the north and center, etc. Sometimes they even overlap, to the benefit of consumers, who can choose the supply of one plant or another according to convenience and play with prices. The logic of scale does not understand state dimensions.
The same criterion could be applied to security and defense, since, like any other service company, it should have an appropriate perimeter for the provision of its services, taking into account the revealed preferences of consumers in terms of quantity and quality and their willingness to pay for them. In addition, several scales of provision would be combined here, depending on the type of demand: just as there are several scales of production in the beverage market, for example, with a regional scale in the case of mass-consumption products (cola drinks) and a European or global scale in the case of high-end products (high-quality single-malt whiskies). The production of security would be similar, since it is also a heterogeneous good. Security related to traffic disputes or nighttime disturbances is usually provided at a local scale; intelligence against terrorism could be carried out at a European scale; robberies and the investigation of violent crimes would be handled at a regional or state scale. Moreover, there can and should be overlaps and redundancies—that is, several agencies or units may provide the same service to ensure that it is in fact provided. These comparisons are intended to show that there is no single correct scale for the provision of security services, nor that they must necessarily be provided under a monopoly regime.
Is it necessary for there to be a single security agency? For many defenders of the state, the peculiarities of defense would prevent the existence of several security agencies operating in parallel, since they would inevitably compete with one another violently. I believe this claim is incorrect. This situation already exists in practice and does not lead precisely to conflict, but rather to cooperation.
In the Spanish context (and even more clearly in the European one, since several national armies are established simultaneously within its territory), local, provincial, regional, national police forces coexist at the state level, along with the Civil Guard, the army, navy, and air force, and U.S. troops deployed at various bases. In the private sphere there are dozens of security companies, often located in adjacent or very nearby buildings. The university is protected by one company, the Xunta de Galicia by another; department stores, banks, and firms each contract their own company. Even at the individual level, one can be protected by several agencies at the same time. In the same way that when we take out more than one insurance policy it is very likely that several risks are doubly covered (travel assistance, accidents, etc.), nothing prevents a company or individual from contracting security services from two or more agencies simultaneously. In addition, public and private agencies compete with armed organizations from the gray or black zones of the economy. Mafias, drug traffickers, human traffickers, and terrorists also compete in the security market, with greater or lesser success. Each of them has an armed organization and provides some kind of protection or security service (drug organizations, for example, protect drug trafficking and seek to guarantee the safety of their traffickers and shipments).
As we can see, in Spain—one of the safest countries in the world—there are numerous armed organizations competing and even overlapping, without there seeming to be serious problems of violence among all these groups. One may, logically, counterargue that many of these organizations are coordinated by the state or subject to its regulation and that, therefore, a certain monopoly of violence still exists. This is a strong argument and must be analyzed.
All these armed groups have a certain degree of operational autonomy, and nothing prevents them from fighting among themselves. They have done so. Without going any further, assault guards and the Civil Guard fought each other during the Spanish Civil War, as did members of different military branches who simply obeyed different commanders. One of the doubts raised in the case of a possible secession of Catalonia is whom the Mossos d’Esquadra would obey. In some countries certain police forces may be associated with drug traffickers or mafias and others not. I have always found it striking that in Mexico the forces tasked with combating drug trafficking are units of the Navy, even when operating inland. This may be due to some phenomenon of infiltration of drug traffickers into police forces and to the fact that those responsible for combating drug trafficking do not trust some of them. The same happens with military forces stationed in the territory of another state, such as U.S. forces in Spain, which even enjoy certain criminal immunities. These do not obey national command except indirectly and can be potential sources of conflict and instability, as has been demonstrated on many occasions. I recommend the excellent book by Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, on this subject.
What this seeks to show, first, is that the existence of multiple defense agencies in a territory does not necessarily mean that they are in perpetual combat with one another; rather, one could potentially resort to one or another depending on the client’s needs, and therefore defense or security does not have to be provided in the form of a monopoly. It is a service like any other, and the logic of its production is the same as that of the rest and does not necessarily entail struggle or conflict. Second, what explains why such varied armed units are not in constant conflict, even though they could be, is cooperation among them.
As was already noted in a previous article, states function internally in an anarchic manner—that is, as individuals bound together by rules, conventions, internal codes of honor, or pecuniary interests—and they have a clear interest in cooperating as an organized group of individuals in order to maintain their power over the governed. When, for some reason, they do not cooperate, conflict arises, which can take various forms, from a coup d’état to open civil war. It is then that it becomes easier to observe how each of these armed organizations adopts differentiated positions.
In Western states, open war is rare, since the degree of integration of their elites and the political formula they adopt makes it very difficult. Conflict among armed agencies is usually limited to leaks and dirty political warfare in a more or less bloodless form (as we can observe now in Spain or in the leaks from the CIA and FBI against or in favor of Donald Trump). The actors involved have no interest in open conflict, since it would call into question their basis of legitimacy and, therefore, the foundation upon which their power rests. Thus, the normal situation is for them to cooperate with one another. In countries that have not yet reached our level of statehood—that is, where elites are less integrated into the norms and values of democratic modernity—we can observe that open conflicts among armed groups operating in the same territory are more frequent.
As we can see, if there is cooperation, many armed forces can coexist in the same territory: conflict will be limited to those that do not cooperate, such as certain mafias or terrorist groups. The issue, then, is not whether security services must be provided under a monopoly regime—which, as we see, is not strictly necessary—but whether, in a stateless society, there would be a sufficient degree of cooperation among different agencies to avoid permanent war. I believe there would be. As we have seen, within the ruling class methods of coordination have developed—whether through integration or exclusion—that make it possible to maintain a reasonable state of peace both within states and among states. These methods are basically the same as those that exist in a society with contractual market relations. In the market for the use of defensive violence, there are incentives to cooperate, fear of sanctions, and forms of organization coordinated by money and prices.
Does anyone think that a society capable of coordinating hundreds or thousands of people around the world to produce clothing, automobiles, or cement in order to obtain a profit margin of 3 or 4 percent would not be capable of coordinating itself in the same way to save its life or its liberty? The same coordination needed to produce any good or service is what is required to produce defense or security services, which are nothing more than goods or services with their own characteristics (every good or service has its peculiarities).
One of the most hotly disputed issues in debates about the possibility of establishing stateless societies concerns how such societies would defend themselves in the absence of a monopolistic provider of defense services. Without such an entity, the inhabitants of a given territory would supposedly be easily defeated by an invader, lacking organization and the minimum degree of collective action required to confront the aggressor successfully. The issue is fascinating and far deeper than it might appear at first glance. In fact, it could be said to be a kind of political-world analogue to what was, in its time, the debate in economic theory over the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism. It requires a very solid understanding of the mechanisms of human coordination and the capacity to carry out collective action in spheres that are totally or partially excluded from the usual economic coordination mechanisms, such as monetary prices or other alternative forms of calculation.
First of all, we must establish that the concept of “invasion” is not something easily defined. In principle, we could perfectly well define any aggression or violation of our physical or material integrity as an invasion. Any violent aggression by another person could fall into this category, since the aggressor is always someone else, and for practical purposes it is of little relevance whether the bandit or terrorist who attacks us is a native citizen of our state or comes from another one. Normally, the harm inflicted on us does not vary according to the color of the aggressor’s passport. The same applies in the case of violence exercised by well-organized groups such as guerrillas or militias. The damage caused by a national guerrilla or terrorist group is not very different from that caused by a militia located beyond our borders. Even internal violence, as in the case of civil wars, can be more intense, since it is usually accompanied by a particular kind of hatred that does not arise as strongly in international conflicts. In any case, both are invasions of the life or property of those affected, and neither the form nor the nature of the armed group needs to be very different. Having one’s house burned down by a compatriot or by a foreigner does not, at first glance, seem very different.
However, with regard to the issue we are discussing in these articles, the distinction does seem to matter. Although in both cases the state uses the potential threat of violence as the ultimate reason justifying its existence, the invasion of our life or property by nationals could be seen as a failure of the state to carry out its functions, demonstrating its inability to enforce its claimed monopoly of violence. In fact, authors such as Martin van Creveld, in The Rise and Decline of the State, predict that modern states confronted with unconventional forms of violence—such as jihadist terrorism or new forms of organized crime—will neither know how nor be able to respond adequately, since the methods used by these actors disrupt traditional patterns of violence management. A tank or a combat aircraft is effective against another state or against a militarily organized guerrilla, but not against network-based mafias such as the ’Ndrangheta or against lone wolves of the Islamic State. Incapable of facing new challenges, the traditional state would, according to this well-known military theorist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, have to change form or disappear as a monopolist of violence.
While internal violence can be used to delegitimize state power, violence exercised by organized groups beyond our borders seems, by contrast, to be a powerful argument for continuing to theoretically legitimize the existence of the state. And it undoubtedly is, which makes it necessary at least to discuss it with some care. If I have understood them correctly, such arguments assume that a society without a state would be easily invaded, and its inhabitants murdered, enslaved, or plundered by some organized group external to that anarchist community. This view is rooted in a kind of anthropological pessimism very much in the Hobbesian tradition, according to which humans would be in perpetual conflict with one another, and only the iron hand of the state—used, of course, with benevolent intentions—could eliminate this threat, which arises from the atavistic human fear of being killed or harmed by one’s fellow humans.
Starting from this premise, we can sketch several invasion scenarios. The first would be an anarchic territory surrounded by states. Critics of anarcho-capitalism predict that such a territory would very likely be invaded, either by surrounding states or by hordes or bands coming from those territories. As in any struggle, the outcome would depend on the relative strength of each actor, their capacity and willingness to fight, their superiority in weaponry, and so on. But let us remember that modern states exclude the majority of the population from the capacity to defend themselves, depriving them of training and arms (the Swiss, by preserving many premodern traits in their statehood, would be almost an exception in our environment). The mere fact of confronting an anarchy with one or several states tells us nothing a priori. The same is true of wars between states: the mere existence of a state does not guarantee its survival or prevent aggression. The state did little good for the Czechs, Belgians, Danes, or French—despite their highly developed states—against the Nazis. The Romans, with all their state apparatus, were unable to resist poorly organized and almost anarchic hordes of Goths or Vandals. I doubt that the Ethiopian state could do much damage to an anarchic Texas populated by fierce minutemen from the Rifle Association. The outcome of the conflict would therefore depend on the military capacity of the parties involved, and the greater or lesser degree of anarchy would be just one more factor in the fight.
If the state, by its mere existence, guaranteed the absence of invasions, this would be a very strong point in its favor in our debate, and I would be the first to acknowledge it. But its existence has not spared a very large number of peoples from being invaded and defeated—exactly the same fate that is said would occur under conditions of anarchy.
The statist argument is completed by the idea that it would be impossible to establish any form of collective action that would allow defense against an invader. As we have pointed out on other occasions, it is curious to observe how enormous groups of people are capable of organizing themselves anarchically to build companies and associations of all kinds, coordinated through prices or tacit rules of conduct, and yet would supposedly be incapable of organizing themselves to defend their lives or those of their loved ones. History shows that they have been capable of doing so, either through confederations for war, such as the Native American nations facing the aggression of the U.S. state, or—curiously enough—by fragmenting themselves even further to make territorial control by the invader more difficult (many Native Americans, for example, split into smaller groups and formed bands of maroons or outlaws to harass the enemy). The Spanish War of Independence against Napoleon’s army shows a similar strategy: Spain was first fragmented into several kingdoms and then guerrilla bands were formed to fight the invader in a decentralized manner (with considerable success, given the enemy’s power). The same strategy was used by the Taliban after the 2001 invasion, with the result that they soon managed to regain a large part of the territory. This strategy, although it may seem otherwise, is not necessarily bad, since it makes conquest more difficult and costly; moreover, it does not hinge resistance on a few decisive battles (as in the fall of France in the Second World War) and allows the resistance to learn the enemy’s way of fighting. For example, would it have been easier or harder for Pizarro to conquer Peru if, instead of facing a large centralized empire of 10 million inhabitants with a few hundred soldiers, he had had to confront 20 principalities of 500,000 inhabitants each? Would the few thousand Spanish conquistadors have found it easier to conquer an America of large empires or an America composed of many stateless societies? As always, everything would depend on the military capacity of each side, but I suspect that anarchy would not make defense against invasion more difficult but rather easier. Even in the case of an alien invasion, one could debate which strategy would be best: concentrating forces and entrusting everything to a centralized entity, or decentralizing and fighting the enemy in a dispersed manner, forcing it to occupy all the territory and confronting it with varied forms of combat.
Another issue that arises in this debate is the idea that everyone would proceed to invade the weakest. It would be very easy for Germany to conquer Luxembourg, just as for France to conquer Monaco or for Senegal to conquer Gambia. Why do they not do so? According to statist logic, it would be practically indifferent to conquer an anarchy or a weaker state, since the capacity to resist would be more or less the same. But the answer is that conquest usually does not bring great advantages to the conqueror—especially in the current context of economic integration and globalization. It is cheaper and more beneficial to buy and trade than to conquer and invade. In the internet age, it is cheaper, more convenient, and less risky to obtain goods through Amazon or Alibaba than to charter warships and mount plundering expeditions. The economic benefits of conquest and empire have never been very large, as shown by the unfortunately scarce literature on the economics of imperialism. And when such benefits do exist, they tend to be concentrated in sectors close to the ruling classes, while the rest of the population bears the costs. If conquest truly benefited the conqueror, countries with immense territorial empires such as Portugal would rank among the richest on earth, and countries that never “enjoyed” the benefits of conquest, such as Switzerland, would be among the poorest. If this applies to conquests among states, it could also apply to the invasion of stateless territories. According to this logic, for the inhabitants of such territories it would suffice to raise the cost of invasion to the point where it no longer pays off, leading potential conquerors to prefer using a mobile phone to obtain what they need rather than subjecting themselves to the hardships of sieges and trenches. In fact, the logic of modern warfare follows this line and seeks not so much to achieve military victories as to exhaust the aggressor and induce withdrawal (Vietnam would be a good example of a defeat caused not by strictly military reasons but by propaganda and economic damage to the invader).
In any case, the danger of invasion exists. That is why anarchist authors such as Michael Huemer (The Problem of Political Authority) argue that the first experiments in stateless society will appear in highly developed and peaceful regions of the world, where the inhabitants of the aggressor territory themselves would see aggression against peaceful neighbors—neighbors with whom they maintain satisfactory commercial and personal relations—as unacceptable. But the possible origins of future anarcho-capitalist societies will be addressed in another article of this kind.
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