"The contradiction in anarchism" - rebuttal?

[Joker]

Some of you are probably familiar with this article, it's an objectivist perspective on why anarchism is wrong and can't work:

 

http://mol.redbarn.org/objectivism/Writing/RobertBidinotto/ContradictionInAnarchism.htmlDoes anyone know if Stefan has made a rebuttal to this? I wish anarcho-capitalism to be possible, and these are the best arguments I've heard against it, so it would be cool if Stefan (or some of you guys) could rebutt these arguments. 

[TheRobin]

that's a loooong article...But generally what I'd say to peopel saying "we can't have competing justice systems" is this: Then you can't have more than one country (as all countries justice is different from the next to some extend), so logically you'd be advocating a one-world government, which is the exact opposite of a "minimal state".So IF the prinicples that you put forth for a MINIMAL state will logically lead to the BIGGEST POSSIBLE state, then your argument is invalid.

[ProfessionalTeabagger]

Here's something. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpiVTvdApsA

[higginsp]

I think there are a number of problems in this critique. I'll just list a few with quotes for the time being:

 

1. "Alas, this does not resolve the anarchist's dilemma. In either 2(a) or (b), you have a de facto "legal monopoly" on the use of force -- the same "immoral" coercive situation for which anarchists denounce governments. Wouldn't 2(a) or (b) amount to "unlimited majority rule," or "might makes right"? In the final analysis, no one would be allowed to ignore or secede from the verdict imposed by the majority of agencies. If so, then what becomes of the alleged "right to ignore the state," the "right to secede," or the "right not to delegate away one's personal "right of retaliation"? Also, what becomes of the minority agencies which disagree with the majority -- or to any lone individual who is not represented by any agency? Where is "consumer sovereignty"?"

 

His dichotomy is problematic. Part (b) of option 2 is not equatable with a government monopoly on violence unless it is stipulated that the income that drives their businesses (the protection agencies) is coercively obtained and/or that the agencies use coercion to prevent competition. If either of these two conditions are not met, protection agencies are not a coercive entity. Even if there were a framework whereby a collection of agencies resolved disputes through a mutually agreed-upon legal code, it could not be properly termed a 'monopoly' on the use of violence if the source of their market position was a result of voluntary exchange to begin with, and any subsequent shift in market sentiments could presumably alter the framework itself. 

 

This fact, however, that market sentiments will shape the legal framework itself is plainly obvious, and it seems to be the crux of his argument. He is of the position that because these private agencies would respond to the whims of the market, that it could lead to the same sort of outcomes present in the state-centric world now. This is clearly true. If, say, everyone in the United States believed that whenever a married man died prior to his wife that his wife must have cursed him (akin to a belief fairly prevalent in parts of rural India), it is likely that wife burnings could become legally sanctioned in such a society. This is why I personally (and Stefan as well from what I can tell) do not advocate anarcho-capitalism as something separate from a philosophical revolution. 

 

2. In sum, what the anarcho-capitalist argument omits are the following vital contextual considerations that attend any use of force in society:

• that -- as a matter of individual survival in society -- one's use of force must be judged and evaluated by everyone else in society, by an objective procedure, in order to distinguish the aggressor from the victim (which is rarely self-evident);

   

• that, at some point, a final verdict by society on the use of force must be objectively rendered through that process, and

   

• that this final verdict must, at last, be imposed and enforced.

To let "the market" pick a final arbiter on the proper uses of force is to leave it to the majority of consumers, whose "sovereignty" regarding the employment of force is to beunlimited. Leaving it all to "the market" means: "to the whims of whichever individual or group has enough money to dominate those who don't."

 

His premises raise some questions: Is a procedure rendered objective merely by means of being forced upon others (as is the case now)? Or is a procedure objective only if it adheres to a logically verifiable philosophical position? If the former is true, it would make the term 'objective' somewhat silly since any set of potential procedures could be declared 'objective' in such a scenario. This would mean that a state simply imposing standards is what makes them objective, which would mean that no standard were objective. The latter scenario would correspond much more with the objectivist view -- that a state can only justifiably respond to the initiation of force, but never itself initiate it. But if this is the case, the current world is evidently devoid of an institution adhering to such an objective procedure, and as such the use of force by current governments does not adhere to his 'vital contextual considerations.' 

 

Further, he argues that an anarcho-capitalist society would result in competition regarding the evaluation of rights. While he does not make this explicit, I think he is suggesting that a 'just state' derives its monopoly on violence by adhering to a proper, i.e. objective, evaluation of rights (which would mean that every single state in the history of the world was unjust). But, let's imagine a scenario. What if another agency were to pop-up, which adhered to the same exact evaluation of rights as this 'just state.' What would the justification be to prevent this new institution from adhering to the same standards, the same precise procedures, but say at a lower cost?

 

More fundamentally, the problem is that the author never justifies the authority of the state. He never explains how a single institution can lay claim to this role in a morally justifiable way. 

 

Those are just a few thoughts I had while reading this.