***I apologize if the quoting looks bad; that is the result of going
from a text editor to pine... not sure how it will show up.
Martin:
> Matt Hill writes:
> > On Thu, 10 Jun 1999, Martin William Smith wrote:
> >
> > > Chomsky said in "Interview with Read and Black Revolution (1995)":
> > >
> > > "That is what I have always understood to be the essence of
anarchism:
> > > the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on
authority,
> > > and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met."
> > >
> > > Doesn't this mean that a a coercive government structure is
justified,
> > > and required, for the purpose of enforcing the burden of proof
> > > requirement and the dismantling of structures that can't meet it?
> >
> > Your question seems to imply that government is required to perform
any
> > kind of action whatsover, that a totalitarian state is the natural
mode of
> > life for humans.
>
> I don't see how it implies that.
It is clear the ordinary people can make judgements concerning moral and
legal acts, and can express those judgments, without the help of
government. Any person can tell when he has been wronged, and can protest
it.
Furthermore, ordinary people are capable of enforcing justice on their
own. They are capable of defending themselves against robbers, murderers,
and rapists, and are capable of forming voluntary associations to do the
same, either for the sake of convenience or to compensate for a lack of
physical might.
You are thinking from the perspective of a politician, who thinks that any
kind of political or social action requires government, that any positive
change is the result of benevolent government action, even if the
government had nothing to do with it or even staunchly opposed it. The
politician, however, is far detached from reality.
> I believe Chomsky is correct, the
> burden of proof has to be placed on authority. Then what? Suppose
> the authority in question either rejects the burden of proof or fails
> to justify itself, but then it also refuses to disappear? There *are*
> evil people. There *are* people who make mistakes. Chomsky's burden
> of proof claim isn't the complete answer.
Chomsky's argument is moral, not tactical. It could apply to an infinite
number of situations, which means the appropriate tactical response will
vary.
Violence may be prudent in some cases to abolish the illegitimate
authority (one which rejects the burden of proof or cannot justify
itself).
In other cases, for example the case of the state, violence may be morally
justified but tactically unwise. In such cases the only solution is to
capitulate to the illegitimate authority, for the same reason one
capitulates to an armed mugger. There may be alternative, non-violent
means of resisting and dismantling the authority.
In many other cases, perhaps most other cases, authority is challenged,
resisted, and dismantled as a fact of everyday life. This is why I think
Chomsky's argument is plausible: it is not an abstract principle pulled
out of the blue, but a description of how people act in the real world.
When people know an authority is unjustified, when it can't possibly meet
the burden of proof, they resist it and will proceed to ignore or abolish
it unless the authority has superior physical force.
Sometimes, however, no force is needed, and the authority naturally
dissipates when it is no longer needed.
Take, for example, the relationship between parents and children. At a
young age, strong parental authority is clearly justified. As the child
matures, he will vie for less parental authority and more independence.
He will continually test and challenge the authority of his parents, to
see what they will tolerate. He will make them justify their authority,
and eventually he will be old enough to rightly conclude that their
justifications fail.
There is tension and struggle in the process, and often a lot of pain. Yet
in this kind of relationship violence is minimal or nonexistent. Change
occurs because of mutual recognition of the child's rights, perhaps not
even consciously.
In other relationships, particularly those involving government, violence
is critical: violence may be necessary to abolish an illegitimate
authority or to preserve a legitimate one. But it is not always
necessary.
> > Can people do things without government? Can people act individually
or
> > collectively without government?
>
> Of course they can and they will, and some of them will do the wrong
> things. Some of them will seek power. Others will go along with them
> to gain privilege.
That seems like a good argument against government. If privilege is
abolished and power is dispersed throughout the society, particularly if
there is a plurality of force, attempts to gain power would be much more
difficult than if power is concentrated in a central institution like a
state.
Wouldn't it be rather hypocritical for a politician to argue against
working outside the state on the grounds that the people doing so might be
subject to corruption?
> > Take this argument:
> >
> > A scientific theory should have predictive power. If a theory fails
to
> > make accurate predictions, it should be discarded or revised until it
> > makes accurate predictions.
> >
> > This argument does not imply that a National Authority on Science is
> > necessary to discard or revise theories. It implies there are people,
> > acting alone or as part of organizations, who will do things by their
own
> > choice. The argument recommends what they should do in regard to
their
> > scientific theories--namely, that they should discard theories that
lack
> > predictive power in favor of theories that have it.
>
> But some people don't do that. A great many people don't do that.
Quite true. And that is just the reason for stating an argument like the
above: if more scientists are convinced of it, more of them would act in
the desired way. Same with Chomsky's argument: if more people were
convinced of it, and acted accordingly, we might have fewer illegitimate
authorities.
> > Similarly, Chomsky argues what people ought to do in regard to
authority.
> > His argument could apply to a slave and his master, a worker and his
> > employer, or any other kind of relationship in which authority exists.
It
> > applies to individuals and groups alike. In no way does it imply a
> > government is necessary, for the simple reason that ordinary people
are
> > capable of acting and thinking for themselves.
>
> Yes, they produce structures that attempt to ensure stability and
> enforcement of the results of the burden of proof. Most people call
> those structures government.
First, structures that ensure "enforcement of the results of the burden of
proof" do not currently exist on a large scale, and if they did they would
be antithetical to government. They do exist on a small scale, indeed in
our very nature--for example the relationship between parents and
children, as mentioned earlier.
The reason Chomsky bothers to make his argument is that we currently lack
the ability to make the more powerful institutions justify themselves. He
thinks we ought to develop such an ability. Thus nobody calls such a
structure government, because it doesn't yet exist.
If it did exist it would not, and could not, be a government, because if
it was a government the first thing it would do is abolish itself.
Governments are quite clearly illegitimate: they are the result of
invasion and conquest, not the divine right of kings to rule, nor the
notoriously vague "social contract."
Only through constant pressure and struggle, often bloody struggle, can
people make governments do their will. Governments do not represent the
will of the people, just as they do not represent the will of God. They
are particular organizations run by particular individuals acting in their
own interests.
Liberal states hide under a cloak of ornate, democratic language;
Communist states hide under a cloak of bureau-speak; yet all states
ultimately rule by force and fraud, some more overtly than others. I
don't know of any states that have any legitimate right to rule, in the
sense that their subjects consented to their rule (and voting is most
certainly not consent).
Second, and more disturbing, is your misconception that governments
"ensure stability." Most often, dictators "ensure stability" better than
anyone else, especially when they feel an urge to torture and murder their
opponents.
When Pinochet was ensuring stability (pretty much in those words) in Chile
after he ousted Allende, human rights observers were, oddly enough,
noticing a lot of corpses floating down the river.
Since government is a group of individuals like any other group, its
definition of "stability," and the action it takes to ensure stability,
will reflect the interests of those individuals.
For that reason, the government's definition of stability, and the action
taken to ensure it, is often radically at odds with an ordinary person's
conception of stability. Frequently the state's "stability" means living
in constant fear for your life, as it has in too many places this century
alone.
> You can call them whatever you want, but
> don't tell me you think everybody is going to do the right thing
> because you have a beautiful vision of the future.
That is a valid criticism of many anarchists, particularly
anarcho-communists.
If you read Errico Malatesta or Mikail Bakunin, a communist and a
collectivist, respectively, they both support voluntary federation from
the bottom up (meaning democratically controlled). The problem is that
they assume all workers have fundamentally the same interests, and will
want to participate in the same organizations.
In reality individuals pursue their own individual, often selfish, goals.
This leads us back to markets and property, although not necessarily
capitalism (depending on how you define capitalism).
Proudhon, the first major anarchist, argued for a socialist society based
on free contract. The political dimension of this society is federalism,
or voluntary federation--and an end to coercive monopoly government. The
economic dimension is mutualism, or mutual reciprocity. This means free
trade including an end to all government-sponsored privileges in the
economy, especially in finance. This would result in the masses, the
working class, being able to own and control what they produce (i.e.
socialism).
Proudhon's ideas were taken in the right direction by American
individualist anarchists, particularly Benjamin Tucker and Lysander
Spooner. They argued that people would be free to defend their person and
property in an anarchy, and could freely associate with others for mutual
defense.
Anarcho-capitalists spell out how this would work in much more detail;
i.e. they suggest private security agencies and private courts competing
on the market.
I consider myself a more traditional individualist anarchist, but I think
anarcho-capitalists have good ideas about how people could protect their
rights without government.
I would prefer a sort of market syndicalism, in which firms would be
mostly owned by their workers, and rough equality would result once
government-imposed monopolies were taken out of the market.
As for the "structures" that dismantle illegitimate authority:
As Spooner so eloquently noted, individuals are capable of repelling
injustice and compelling justice on their own. If someone imposes
illegitimate authority over me, if someone claims to be my master, my
governor, my savior, or my furher, and attempts to force me to do his
will, to sacrifice my person and property, I may well shoot him, or throw
a grenade at him.
For the sake of civility and expediency, I may join an association of
like-minded people that has the resources to defend me. It may be a
private protection firm, to which I pay money. Or it may be a community
militia, in which I participate and pledge some of my time and money in
exchange for the knowledge that in my time of need others will come to my
aid.
There are other authoritarian institutions, like wage labor, that some
consider distasteful or immoral. But something like wage labor cannot be
resisted with force, because it is based on voluntary agreements. For
that kind of authority propaganda, debate, protests, and boycotts are
necessary to dismantle it (if it should be dismantled). You must persuade
people to abandon it with their own right reason, because that kind
behavior does not violate anyone's rights.
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