From The Liberty Defense League, an exceptionally intelligent posting on the weaknesses of anarchism.
Some libertarian friends call for anarchy to prevail. While such a state of affairs may be offering momentary delights, we need to remember that if we stand for nothing, we will fall for anything. Anarchy is government of nothing, and is only a transitional period between different states of order. Order always arises from chaos, and anarchy is often a tool of leftists. I am sure true libertarians are well meaning in upholding individuals’ self-rule in looking to a utopian anarchy, but I believe they are being used, even misled, to merely be creating conditions for another tyranny to prevail. The libertarian anarchists are correct in stating why the current Federal Union of Criminals Unlimited gives us ample reason to secede. But to what goals do we truly aspire?
(My comment posted from the site, copied below for recording purposes.)
Exceptionally intelligent article. Thank you.
A couple of insights for context.
No titleThe Anarchist movement, and the Rothbardian Libertarian Philosophy, are reactions to the failure of the conservative movement as well as the traditional classical liberal movement that is the jeffersonian model under which our nation has been founded, to provide an intellectual framework that can compete with the combination of marxist philosophy, socialist sentiments, and political tools that derive from the combination of Keynesian monetary philosophy with the rise of the dynamic stochastic equilibrium model. The Anarchist movement, and the Rothbardian Libertarian Philosophy, are reactions to the failure of the conservative movement as well as the traditional classical liberal movement that is the jeffersonian model under which our nation has been founded, to provide an intellectual framework that can compete with the combination of marxist philosophy, socialist sentiments, and political tools that derive from the combination of keynesian monetary philosophy with the rise of the dynamic stochastic equilibrium model. (I realize that this is a mouthful, but it is the correct analysis.)
Mises, Hayek, Parsons, Popper, Rothbard, Nozick, fall failed despite great minds, to provide a solution to the semi-rational tools provided by the above listed models. The conservatives from Kirk onward produced sentimental historical references, but no rational philosophical framework. Especially that could compete with the heady religious scripture, rational philosophy, and volume of production of marxism and marxists.
They failed because government consist of both the associations you refer to, as well as the institutions that limit the use of free associations to become governments themselves, and therefore have the ability to project their will by edict, rather than the ability to advocate their will upon the desirous.
From this viewpoint, the anarchic research program, when approached as a program of research in limiting government (as largely done by Hoppe), has accomplished more than all other freedom-driven intellectual programs.
But as a practical political movement it will fail. It wil fail for the reasons you have stated. However, it has contributed greatly to the philosophical debate. We just do not yet know how to change our institutions to make use of the libertarian anarchist framework of privatization in order to balance the use of monetary policy and redistributive sentiments, with freedom. Libertarians figured it out. Most of it. And we should thank them for it.
The primary change in the nature of government was that western government ceased attempting to increase economic productivity after the great war, and instead, emphasized expansion and redistribution. And this treat to our freedom was started by the Louisiana Purchase and our fate sealed with the civil war. Liberty is for small homogenous states. And as Federalist 10 states, any time you have a government over people with dissimilar economic and cultural interests, it’s not a government, it’s an empire, and as an empire, it’s oppressive.
– a member of the anarcho capitalist research program.