Brainpolice : Social Contract

Lysander Spooner: Libertarian Hero

Brainpolice — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 06:26:00 GMT

The American individualist anarchist Lysander Spooner was one of the last natural law philosophers of the 19th century, and his crowning achievement is arguably the total demolition of the myth of the social contract. Spooner applied a libertarian theory of natural law to the United States Constitution that lead him to reject the authority of the constitution, leading to his radical work "No Treason: Constitution of No Authority", in which he applied common sense standards of justice and contract law to political institutions that delegitimized them. Spooner proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the state is not genuinely based on consent, that the standard social contract and democratic arguments for the sovereignty of the state is a fraud.

Spooner was also a slavery abolitionist and a strong supporter of the principle of individual secession, which goes hand in hand. While maintaining a radical opposition to slavery, he simultaneously opposed the concept of "the union" and opposed the civil war. He more or less accused the northern states of only reforming and expanding slavery, although he wasn't necessarily completely sympathetic to the confederacy either. Furthermore, he tried to outcompete the government in mail delivery and got shut down by the government. Another notable feature of Spooner is that he explicitly took the position that vices are not crimes, coinciding with the standard libertarian opposition to prohibition laws and authoritarian forms of social planning. While Spooner may have a legalistic aura, his legalism was not statist in nature and he more fundamentally was working with ethics when it comes down to it.

Spooner was loosely associated with the individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker and the periodical "Liberty". While in the grand scheme of things Spooner's political philosophy was similar to that of other individualist anarchists, it could be said that his approach to property appears to have a distinctively neo-lockean element to it, although Spooner is actually claimed to be a libertarian socialist by some. In either case, some genuine dividing lines did emerge as Benjamin Tucker adopted an egoist position under the influence of the work of Max Stirner, which philosophically clashes with Spooner's natural law position. Spooner was a strong advocate of "natural rights", while a Stirnerite egoism rejects the very concept of "right". So in a certain sense, from that point onward individualist anarchism can be seen as splitting between natural rights proponents and egoists, with Spooner remaining on the natural rights side.

Spooner could be viewed as the first political theorist to take natural law philosophy to the conclusion of anarchism. While Proudhon had of course already come to the conclusion of anarchism, his approach wasn't necessarily a strict natural law philosophy. The earliest natural law philosophies actually justified political absolutism. It wasn't until guys like Locke and Jefferson that it began to meaningfully take a more liberal character, justifying limits on political institutions. But all of these natural law approaches prior to that of Spooner ultimately justified state sovereignty on the grounds of some kind of social contract concept. Spooner took natural law philosophy to its logical conclusion by demonstrating that it is impossible for any state to genuinely be contractual as a state qua state, that all currently existing states must be illegitimate by the standards of natural law. Even Locke invoked the concept of the social contract being undoable, but he didn't take this far enough.

In a sense, Spooner can be seen as merely continueing the Jeffersonian project. The views of some of the later natural law philosophers and classical liberals such as Jefferson and Paine was arguably proto-anarchist in nature. "Philosophical anarchism" was common among the more radical American liberals and heavy emphasis was placed on decentralization. But they always ultimately maintained a pragmatic support for a minimal level of government. Spooner was the first natural law philosopher to overcome this limit, arguably representing the culmination of natural law philosophy. The developement of natural law philosophy in America more or less ends with Spooner, until Murray Rothbard picked it up around a century later and drew heavily on Spooner as a referance.

Spooner has a unique place in the history of anarchism and is worthy of it.

Competition and Cooperation

Brainpolice — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:34:00 GMT

In the economic sense of the term, competition refers to the incentive to better appease a multiplicity of demands, and cooperation refers to the most efficient and ethical means of meeting such demands. An individual's demands are better met through cooperation and production than through isolation and destruction. Competition does not refer to a war of all against all or atomism, it refers to a process in which decentralized cooperation is employed in the attempt to fulfill a dynamic and variant latticework of demands. Monopoly, on the other hand, refers to the lack of competition, the imposition of a singular or more limited array of options through coercive means. Competition and monopoly are therefore dichotomous in this sense, as competition entails a multiplicity of options pursued freely. Competition is a reflection of there being multiple methods of cooperation and multiple ends that cooperation can be used to pursue, and as such there is no absolute dichotomy between competition and cooperation.

Individualism does not regaurd the individual as if they exist in a vacuum, it merely recognizes the individual's sovereignty as co-existing with interpersonal relations, and that it is a fundamental building block of a society. It is erroneous to present a false dichotomy between uniformity and atomism, when neither of the two reflect the nature of an individual let alone a society. Society qua society is founded on voluntary cooperation, but this does not conflict with individual sovereignty. Voluntary cooperation is merely the net effect of people making use of their individual sovereignty, and competition is merely a reflection of the diversity of wants that people pursue as sovereigns. While interpersonal relations are something to take into account, the individual still retains their independance from the transgressions of others in an equilibrium, which aknowledges the competitive element of society that is responsible for creativity and innovation.

Cooperation and production is not an ethical imperative in and of itself, it is something that one has a greater incentive towards in conditions of equal liberty. However, one ultimately retains their sovereignty to not produce and not participate in a particular organization or interaction that they didn't explicitly consent to. In a voluntary society, the methods in which one cooperates and the extent to which there is a binding obligation to cooperate can only be in a contractual context in which consent is explicitly given prior to the enforcement of the obligation. One does not have an unchosen positive obligation to be a member of a particular organization or to participate in its process of decision-making. The implication of this is not the negation of society as such, but the decentralization of society as a consequence of people entering and exiting from a wide array of contractual agreements.

The coercive imposition of uniformity stifles cooperation. It disincentivizes and erodes at competitive alternatives that otherwise would have been fostered through cooperation, and it violates the individual's sovereignty. Coercion is anti-cooperative by its very nature, as it can only establish a parasitic relationship or a zero sum game, while cooperation is geared towards mutual benefit or reciprical relationships. Centralization and monopoly can only establish the elimination of individual choice in the process of cooperation, and therefore the elimination of competition. Competition is necessary to counteract thea rbitrary imposition of a particular set of preferences, otherwise there is no genuine cooperation to speak of, only subservience. Cooperation is not something that is centrally planned or coercively enforced, it is a process of spontaneous order.

Rejecting The Natural/Synthetic Dichotomy

Brainpolice — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 14:34:00 GMT

I reject the natural/synthetic dichotomy. The natural/synthetic dichotomy is manifested in two fundamental ways: (1) the assumption that humans and/or human constructs are separate from nature and (2) the assumption that certain human constructs are "natural" while others are not. The problem with this dichotomy is that humans and their constructs are a part and product of nature; it is impossible for humans to step outside of the context of nature. Unless one wishes to posit a supernatural, all that exists or occurs is natural by default. Something that is not natural would be something that simply does not exist or occur at all. Hence, it makes no sense to speak of existing things or phenomenon as if they are not natural, or to defend or support a given thing or phenomenon by appealing to it being natural.

Everything is natural, regaurdless of how common or rare it is, when it occurs or doesn't occur, wether its beneficial or detrimental, good or bad, and so on. That which is natural, which is simply to say something that occurs or exists, cannot be construed as being good or bad by mere virtue of being natural. Nature is morally neutral in this sense, because the mere existance of a thing or phenomenon in of itself does not signify value. In other words, nature does not have intrinsic value. Understood broadly, it simply is what it is. This is not to say that there is no purpose or merit to assigning value to certain phenomenon, but that its mere occurance is not what gives it value. For if that which is natural is inherently good or bad, then literally everything must be assumed to be inherently good or bad, and that is absurd.

It's also important to note that just because something is natural does not necessarily mean that it is universal, inevitable or permanent. Nature is not static, it is dynamic, which is to say that it is in a constant state of flux. That which is common in the present may very well be rendered obsolete and archiac in the future. It can be quite fallacious to appeal to phenomenon from the past as if it is representative of an inevitable future or to regaurd current phenomenon as if they represent a permanent state of affairs. What once was natural can be rendered non-existant over time, and what once was little more than a pipe dream can become "the natural order". Appealing to the past as "natural" is simply a weak argument. The present and future is no less "natural" and the "naturalness" of things is really irrelevant.

One way in which the natural/synthetic dichotomy is manifested is in the arguementation of primitivists, anti-civilizationists and radical environmentalists. The contemporary technology and extended division of labor produced by humans is demonized as "unnatural" while more primitive and "self-sufficient" ways of living are romantisized as "natural". Human civilization is characterized as being inherently antagonistic with nature, and nature is assumed to have intrinsic value. Radically egalitarian philosophy makes use of the dichotomy as well, with egalitarianism being construed as "natural" while heirarchy is considered to be "unnatural". Interestingly, primitive societies are often pointed to as examples of egalitarianism, even though a non-biased look at such societies likely reveals quite a bit of heirarchy.

The natural/synthetic dichotomy is also manifested in conservative philosophy. Rigid class heirarchy, religious authority, familial authority, racism, nationalism, have been charactered as "the natural order" (with strong use of naturalistic language used to defend them), as if they are inevitable laws of nature and intrinsic authorities, and deviations from them are construed as synthetic attempts to produce a "new man" in antagonism with nature. Conservative philosophy strongly appeals to tradition as being "natural", and deviations from tradition such as homosexuality, secularism and multiculturalism are construed as "unnatural". All of this could be said to stem from a pessemistic and archiac accessment of nature that lies at the heart of conservatism.

Social contract theory and traditional statist apologetics is riddled with the natural/synthetic dichotomy because it tends to construe centralized political organization as if it involves man exiting "the state of nature", while at the same time there is a very strong temptation to characterize the rise of centralizd political organization as a "natural" phenomenon in the sense that is inevitable. Statism is construed as "the natural order" that inevitably arises from social organization. And statist politics is riddled with debate over precisely what kind of centralized political organization is the most "natural" or what the "natural progression" will lead to. Traditionally, anarchy is either brushed off as "unnatural" or is conflated with a primitivist "natural state" before centralized political organization took place.

While these various types of social phenomenon and organization most certainly can be evaluated, wether or not they are "natural" is really irrelevant to such an evaluation, because they are all "natural" to the extent that they occur or exist at all. The natural/synthetic dichotomy is a misnomer that sidetracks from the real substantive debates that could take place.

The Myth of "The Rule of Law"

Brainpolice — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:43:00 GMT

The theory of a republic is essentially that, in contrast to democracy in which there is tyranny of the majority and in contrast to monarchy in which there is the rule of a single man or oligarchy, the law itself is what rules rather than men. In essence, a republic is supposed to be a model for government that avoids being both both democracy and monarchy, and allegedly replaces the adminstration of men over men with the adminstration of the law itself over men. In a republic, the law is supposed to restrain the lay public from creating tyranny of the majority (I.E. a democracy) and simultaneously restrain the institutional agents of the state from functioning as an elite of rulers imposing their will on the lay public (I.E. an oligarchy).

But a basic understanding of how human beings work and a rational analysis of how the state functions as an institution, including so-called republics, renders this theory of government as a rather blatant absurdity. How can a law be self-enforcing? By definition, a governmental law is drafted by men and must be enforced by men. No political system can escape the rule of men, for all political systems are created and run by men. At the same time, no political system is the result of the decisions of everyone within a society, for at a fundamental level all political systems are oligarchies in which a small percentage of the overall population are those with direct control over the state apparatus, those who actually make and enforce the laws.

The absurdity of the notion that a piece of paper with words on it in and of itself will fatalistically or pre-emptively stop human beings (including those within the state apparatus itself) from engaging in certain actions should be rather obvious. In terms of the lay public, they may theoretically engage in such actions anyways and their actions may be rather unpredictable. A piece of paper isn't going to restrain a mob. And in terms of those within the state apparatus themselves, they have most leeway of all in the matter, for it is ultimately they who make the laws and may choose to enforce or not enforce them. Since they are not really bound by any higher external 3rd party institution, they may theoretically function in a lawless manner. The law maker is effectively and seemingly paradoxically "above the law". For since they have a monopoly on law, they may theoretically interpret it and defy it as they please. The law is not binding on them. Rather, the law's content and applicability is actually bound to their whims as the ones with power.

So it would seem that an attempt at a republic will always reduce to some kind of oligarchy, most likely a representative democracy with a constitution. The constitution is merely an additional feature of the democracy that is meant to restrain both the people and the government. Except a constitution cannot really be effective in any consistant or long-term sense. It will not fatalistically restrain institutional agents of the state from using power and the lay public from engaging in majoritarian or mob behavior. As the decades and centuries pass, it becomes less and less meaningful and effective as a society evolves (or devolves). At best, it functions as a lame rationale to provide legitimacy to the state while its alleged function as a restraint is rendered meaningless by the ability of the state's institutional agents to exercise their power. A constitution does nothing to actually restrain or take away the oppurtunity or ability for institutional agents of the state to use power.

The notion of the rule of law would only make sense if the state was an entity external to human interaction, as if it were not made up of human beings but was enforced through some natural or supernatural mechanism. But the state is quite clearly created and administered by acting human beings. It is not some sort of intrinsic mechanism of nature that functions independantly of human action, or the result of the will of some deity. The only laws that can be said to rule all on their own irrespective of men are natural laws. But natural law is not something that political systems are based on, as political systems are the synthetic creations of men. At best, natural law is an independant standard of justice that currently existing political systems may be held up to and discredited with. While some early natural law theories were used to legitimize states, a properly formed and applied natural law theory can only be used to delegitimize states.

There is good reason to be quite skeptical towards the effectiveness of governmentally created laws to begin with. Not only is it absurd to propose that laws can rule on on their own, but the ability of human beings to enforce them is quite limited due to a certain factor of unpredictability in the behavior of human beings. That is, the mere existance of a law illegalizing certain actions and even the existance of an institutional apparatus that attempts to have humans enforce such a law and threatens punishment for defying it does not gaurantee that people will not in fact defy the law and that people will not in fact get away with defying the law. While this has obvious implications with respect to laws prohibiting economic interactions (which are miserable failures in light of their own alleged goals), it is even true with respect to laws against basics that everyone pretty much agrees are wrong like murder, rape and theft.

The notion that most people generally don't murder, rape and steal either solely or primarily because there is a governmental law against them is rather absurd if one accepts the premise of free will (at least some kind of compatibalism). The existance of a governmental law in and of itself is not the cause of good or ethical behavior, and some people do engage in the shunned actions in question despite the existance of a law against it. If someone is truly determined to engage in such an action, they are going to do it regaurdless of whether or not there is a governmental law against it. Criminals are criminals precisely because they have an extremely high time preferance, I.E. they want what they want now regaurdless of potential negative consequences that may come about in the future. If someone does not engage in such an action, it is mostly likely primarily because they themselves find it ethically impermissable. Social convention itself, combined with the natural incentives towards social cooperation, is the primary reason why most people tend to generally be peaceful in interpersonal relations.

In a fundamental sense, a society truly cannot be planned or socially engineered in the long-run, even by laws. A society is the sum total of interactions between the individuals that make it up, and such interpersonal relations are so complex and diverse that it would be impossible for a single individual or organization to truly predict and absolutely control their behavior. No human being or group of human beings has the mental capacity, let alone the physical ability, to deterministically control and pre-empt the behavior of everyone within a society. They would have to be omniscient to do so. The mere fact that one can only be at one place at one time renders any attempt to efficiently exercise such control ridiculous and pointless. So it could be said that all government is fortunately limited by definition, limited by the natural limits of human ability and the unpredictability and diversity of human behavior.

Quite clearly, the law is not something worthy of putting much of one's faith in, even with good intentions.

Definitions

Brainpolice — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 05:08:00 GMT

So I put together some relatively witty definitions of my terms. If you're not offended by at least one of these, then you are awesome!

Constitutionalism - The belief that a piece of paper drafted and signed by a tiny aristocracy of men is a legitimate perpetual contract that makes the government voluntary on the part of those within a society that did not sign the document and limits the powers of governmental agents for all of eternity.

Minarchism - The belief that there can be a government limited to the protection of rights without violating rights in and of itself; the belief that all goods and services should be provided by the free market yet somehow the principle magically doesn't apply to the defense and arbitration industry.

Democracy - The belief that the government is controled by the people simply because every few years they get to punch a hole in a piece of paper with the names of a few rich and powerful men on it.

Nationalism - The belief that imaginary lines on a map constitute real and meaningful property boundaries; the belief that territories have human traits or personalities of their own; the belief that immigration is the spawn of satan.

Objectivism - The belief that the initation of force is wrong yet somehow it is permissible to arbitrarily invade Iran and Venezuela because "we" have oil interests there; the belief that only romanticism is real art; the belief that you can eliminate taxation and still have a "government".

Political Libertarianism - The belief that the state is inefficient and immoral yet for some strange reason the state is the only viable means by which we can bring about liberty; the belief that democracy is tyrannical yet we must use it to our advantage.

Paleoconservatism - The belief that conservatism was hijacked by leftists and communists and that the "true conservatives" are those who support protectionism and white nationalism; the belief that you're more conservative than those creepy neocons yet somehow you support just about as powerful of a government as they do.

Christianity - The belief that the path to salvation lies with devotion of one's life to a Jewish zombie hippie who is his own father.

Satanism (Laveyan) - The belief in the writtings of a former carnie con artist who haphazardly threw together the ideas of Ayn Rand and Aleister Crowley, incoherant ramblings on the Enochian key and rhetoric to drawn in rebelious teenagers.

Zionism - The belief that because your people were nearly liquidated once, you have an inherent right to liquidate others and forcibly remove them from their own territory.

Religion - The belief that fairy tales from centuries or millenia ago passed down through shaky oral tradition and written down by fallable men are actually absolutely true and codes to live one's life by.

Collectivism - The strange belief that groups have a mind of their own yet their component parts don't.

Altruism - The belief that self-destructive servitude for the sake of others is the greatest virtue; the belief that everyone should mutually be slaves to eachother.

Epistemological Subjectivism - The belief that all truth claims can be reduced to mere personal opinion or preferance, yet somehow this view isn't a mere opinion in and of itself.

Epistemological Nihilism - The belief that there is no such thing as truth, yet somehow it is true that there is no such thing as truth.

Statism - The belief that it is not only moral but necessary for a particular group of individuals to do that which is openly aknowledged as being immoral and not necessary for everyone else to do; moral hypocrisy at the institutional level.

Primitivism - The strange belief that living in a cave or mud-brick hut or as a hermit in the woods is preferable to modern industrial society; the romantisization of long gone tribal and hunter-gatherer societies (in which life was nasty, brutish and short) as peaceful and prosperous utopias.

Welfarism - The belief that the poor can be helped by giving them back a tiny chunk of what was originally stolen from them and keeping them in a state of dependancy on the government; the bribery of the lower classes.

Inflationism - The belief that all problems can be solved by simply printing up more money, despite overwhelming evidence that the arbitrary creation of new money creates problems in and of itself.

Monetarism - The belief held by a bunch of Chicago School economists who think that they are free market proponents but really are quasi-Keynsians.

Anarcho-Syndicalism - The belief that corporations are evil yet somehow corporate dominated, government chartered and cartelized unions are the path towards a free and stateless society.

Hobbesianism - The belief that a highly pessemistic view of human nature that entails war of all against all justifies absolute control by the state, despite the fact that the state is made up of *gasp* human beings.

Radical Environmentalism - The belief that the planet itself has intrinsic value and that human beings are inherently evil parasites on the face of the planet; the modern religion of nature-worshop.

Globalism - The strange belief that large-scale conflict and war would end if only we put all political power in the hands of a singular oligarchal institution with control over everyone in the entire world.

Animal Rights - The belief that non-human entities deserve human rights; the belief that chickens and bumble bees should be equal before the law; the attempt to liberate the unliberatable.

Marxism - The belief that some crazy rich German guy has predicted an inevitable egalitarian future and has mapped out the path towards the liberation of all poor and working people through the work of a benevolent dictatorship.

Racism - The strange belief that a particular roll of the genetic dice entitles and requires one to completely separate themselves from others with another particular roll of the genetic dice; the collectivism of bubble-headed bigots.

The Myth of the Social Contract

Brainpolice — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 13:20:00 GMT

One of the most erroneous political ideas is the notion of the social contract. The idea is that the legitimacy of a government is based on a social contract between the people and the government. In America, the constitution is supposed to be our social contract. But since no such "social contract" has ever been an actual voluntary contract among "the people", it cannot be said to have any genuine authority under any common sense standards of justice. None of us ever signed the document (and even when it was drafted, it was only signed by a tiny aristocracy of people). Rather, we are assumed to have implicitly "consented" to it merely for being born within the territory. This strikes me as incredibly unjust. A true contract requires explicit consent. However, the standard view of the social contract is that everyone implicitly agrees to it by simply living under a given government.

The idea of a contract that I never signed that binds me to the authority of the state from birth, is akin to slavery from birth. I never signed no stinking contract. How is it that I am binded by this document for merely being born within the territory? How is it that I am obligated to serve a particular band of men for merely being born within the territory? How can a document be self-enforcing? It cannot, it must be created and enforced by flesh and blood individual men. How can the law rule all on its own? It cannot. The rule of law is a concept meant to, or that at least functions to even without such intent, disguise what is really the rule of men. The state can not be contractual. If such an institution truly is contractual, it ceases to be a state in any rational definition of the word.

The Lockean view of sovereignty essentially boils down to the idea that as soon as the constitutional contract is broken by the government, it is no longer binding and the government therefore no longer has sovereignty. In fact, without realizing it, Locke throws a huge bone to anarchists, because no government in the history of mankind fits the criteria necessary for his social contract. He was indeed denounced by his detractors as being an anarchist, for they quite correctly realized that the implications of his theory of sovereignty would completely delegitimize all existing states. Under common sense standards of jurisprudence, and Lockean principles, the constitution literally is not a binding contract. Furthermore, even if we treat it as having once been binding, the government has long since reniged on its contractual obligations. Therefore, under the classical liberal theory of sovereignty, it (and the government that it spawned) has no legitimate authority.

What about the idea that the constitution gives us our rights? It does no such thing. Rights are natural. You have them regaurdless of wether or not the law recognizes them. If the 2nd amendment was not in the bill of rights, you would still have a right of self-defense. It would not be legally recognized, but you will still have that right. This is the Lockean-style view of natural rights. You have them by virtue of being a human being. Constitutions do not give you your rights, they can only legally recognize them. Rights do not come from governments or laws, they come from human nature itself. All the government can do at best is abstain from violating your rights. In the Lockean view, governments and laws may be instituted in the name of securing these rights, but they are not where they derive from.

Thomas Jefferson said it best: "A free people claim their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." -- Thomas Jefferson

From a practical standpoint, the constitution already has been shown to not work. It was defied almost from day one and the post-civil-war federal government, and especially the post WWI federal government, essentially has little to no resemblance to the document_ The constitution already has failed, so I don't see the logic in trying the exact same thing again. Clearly, the document can either be interpreted in a manner that implies the opposite of its original intent or meaning, or outright defied anyways. The document was flawed in the first place (not to mention that it was expansive in comparison to the document that preceded it, namely the AOC).

What about the content of the constitution? While it has been argued ad nauseum that it's "original intent" (or, to take a somewhat more strong stance, the "original meaning" of the words in themselves) was to limit the government's powers, the document itself contains plenty of "loopholes" and vague language that can easily be construed (and have been so construed) to grant expansive powers not intended or apparent within the plain language. The "general welfare" clausecomes to mind most of all. It has been used to justify practically anything the government does, for "general welfare" is a loaded, subjective and arbitrary term. Who's welfare, and what exactly is welfare? Who will define this for us? "The supreme court", you answer? What kind of limit on government is this, that it may define its own powers arbitrarily and at whim?

Not only can the constitution not work and has been empirically shown to not have worked, but it cannot be ethically justified to begin with.