Aus so krummem Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden.
Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.
– Immanuel Kant
While gradually, very gradually recovering from a severe flu, I have occasionally joined a different sandbox to delight readers at Cafe Hayek with some cheeky friendly fire.
Motto: just because I have invested a lot in developing a libertarian way of looking at the world will neither get me to suspend (i) the independence of my mind nor (ii) that unflinching attraction toward whatever appears closer to the truth than anything else -- to the contrary.
While feeling increasingly uncomfortable with certain attitudes typical of libertarian anti-statism, I have found no reasons to become less skeptical of the state than I used to be. However, my suspicion is growing that only then will we become more efficient at keeping the state under control if we understand better how it works and why it is likely to continue to persist.
From an exchange at Cafe Hayek:
GT:
In a way, are we libertarians not worshipping the state, too, ascribing
more power to it than it has? Enveloping it in a cloud of magically
omnipotent evil; thus practising a worship that imbues us with too much
awe to look with appropriate care at the intricate conditions and
constraints of 'the state'?
As for aesthetics: is an excess of disgust and dismissal not equally liable to generating outgrowths of kitsch?
S(omeone) E(lse):
No. I don't know what you personally ascribe to the state, but I don't think of it as magical, omnipotent or necessarily evil. But even in the absence of evil intent, do recall what the road to hell is paved with.
GT:
Fair enough. But what about the billions of people that would not live without the state framework that has been indispensable in all high civilizations so far, what about the enormous progress of civilization and the unbelievably high standard of living and quality of life brought about by an increasingly complex division of labour invariantly accompanied by state structures? To echo your last phrase: But even in the absence of benign intent, it seems that the road to heaven (on earth) is paved with it.
GT adds:
You write: "I don't think of it as ... necessarily evil." This triggers my curiosity, because my fellow libertarians do not seem to be awfully good at explaining why and how the state is not "necessarily evil". They seem to specialise in pointing out its egregious aspects. So tell me, why do you think the state is not necessarily evil. I am thirsty for satisfactory libertarian answers to this question.
SE:
Georg, while government has been pretty ubiquitous, it has not been
"indispensable". I think you're conflating those two terms. How did
the state bring about division of labour? I don't follow.
The
state is populated by people working in their own interest. The problem
is that they have the coercive power of a monopoly on violent force at
their disposal. Coercion is, IMO, evil even if the people doing the
coercing and their intent is not evil. So, the state may not be evil,
but what it achieves and how it goes about it is evil.
Finally,
but importantly, I don't remember a moment where I was elected to speak
on behalf of libertarians. So, I am not giving "the libertarian
perspective"; this is my opinion. I would accept or reject it on that
basis.
GT:
I am afraid you only confirm the pattern that I observe in my
libertarian friends: I had asked you to explain why you believe that the
state is "not necessarily evil", as I found this a remarkably deviant
proposition by a libertarian.
Your answer, however, does not
support your initial claim. What you seem to be saying is that PEOPLE
WHO WORK FOR THE STATE do not necessarily have evil INTENTIONS. But the
rest of your arguments amounts to claiming that the STATE is
necessarily and unconditionally evil as it relies on coercion.
As for the indispensability issue, I urge you to try to find a
connection between state and highly complex forms of the division of
labour for yourself, just for your ways of thinking to have a walk in a
different park. Later you may still want to consult the literature on
the issue that I have mentioned in an earlier comment to this blog.
The source.
And in another comment, I conclude:
The upshot: as a libertarian I have come to doubt that we libertarians have a sufficiently powerful positive theory of the state, relying too much on normative preferences. There is too much wishful thinking and feel-good dismissal of 'statists views'. I can see only one serious effort to delineate a political scaffolding for a free society, and that is Hayek's constitutional proposal in volume 3 of Law, Legislation, and Liberty (Boudreaux has good grounds to consider it the weakest of the three volumes (it's uncharacteristically repetitive, yet it still contains very powerful stuff), which Hayek described in another article as a utopia - and it is. We libertarians have no effective theory of political change toward more freedom (we can only hope it will somehow happen, in the process becoming mopers), and that has to do with our normatively motivated disdain for and prejudice against the state. There are simply certain aspects of the state that we are not prepared to look at - first and foremost the possibility that we can never get rid of it and have no reliable means yet to preclude its toxicity. There is a powerful economic logic to the phenomenon of the state and we libertarians should be at the spearhead of this kind of research, rather than fearing one might be looked upon as a 'statist'.
The source.
"We libertarians have no effective theory of political change toward more freedom."
I think this is not entirely a true statement. If one looks at institutions like The Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), and the Institute for Justice (IJ) we find attempts, sometimes successful, at changing the political aspects toward a more libertarian society. I donate to both with the hopes that their work bears fruit. Even the ACLU does libertarian work from time to time and a recent SCOTUS ruling argued by them has proven to successfully allow the protection of a citizen's, and police officer's, right to videotape encounters - undoing state law prohibiting the filming of officers.
As for the normative description, I fail to understand how libertarians escape large amounts of normative thought, being a very small minority in a socialist world. Cracking the veneer of the state (promoted by corporations, schools, politicians and media - all beneficiaries) can only be done by pointing out its wrongdoing as well as suggesting what ought to be. Ideologies get pulled along by the normative, with the hopes that enough people will agree to work toward that never-reached utopian goal.
Also, there are positive examples given when they occur as to how liberty is gaining ground. It does not happen often because free markets and any move in the direction of the classical liberal mindset are pounced upon by an entrenched system. This creates even more normative banter, unfortunately.
Posted by: Eric Parks | 11/30/2012 at 07:09 PM
Your discerning thoughts are absolutely valid.
I have a clientele in mind that is infinitely cruder in their ways of thinking than you are, or indeed could ever be, Eric.
It is always an enriching pleasure to consider your ideas on an issue.
Presently, my main intellectual challenge, transitorily (I am sure I will chance upon the answers that I am yet missing), is the utter persistence of the state phenonmeneon (in every stage of the progress of human civilization), and I seem to find insufficient help in the libertarian literature to account for it.
Why is the state never ousted, if libertarian schemes are more powerful, more efficient? Why is Germany, one of the richest countries in the world, not exactly based on the Wild West model, nor the still richer United States?
While my emphasis is mainly on this question, at the moment and maybe for a while, it is all the more important that you (and indeed other fellow-bloggers) keep up vigilance vis-a-vis the countless problems and threats emanating from government/the state.
Posted by: Georg Thomas | 12/01/2012 at 06:53 AM