Man, Economy, and Liberty

17

Ethics vs. Coercion: Morality or Just Values?

Tibor R. Machan

Government versus the State

The state consists of full time professionals in coercion.”1 Murray Rothbard believes this and that is why he calls himself an anarchist. He is an opponent of coercion, ultimately on grounds of “a natural rights theory embedded in a wider system of Aristotelian-Lockean natural law and a realistic ontology and metaphysics.”2

There is no question that all governments use force. And most of them are also coercive. To Murray Rothbard it seems self-evident that they must be. He admits, of course, that “in the libertarian tradition … either the state is to be abolished, or, if retained, … it be kept small and weighed down with fierce restrictions and greeted by permanent social hostility.”3 But since states persistently and inexcusably violate the rights of their citizens, as well as those of many foreigners, the former is the only just alternative.

Yet within the framework of Aristotelian-Lockean social philosophy the equivalent to governmental authority clearly has a role that by no means ought to be “greeted by permanent social hostility.” How can Murray Rothbard nevertheless place himself in the company of these two famous defenders of government?

Throughout recorded history no government has managed to remain untarnished by coercion. Some, however, have approached giving full official recognition and protection to individual rights. Others have not even given lip service to the idea.

Now, in Rothbard’s discussions of political theory, anarchism is usually defended in contrast to statism, not so much to the institution of government. He has, in short, argued for a “society without a state,” which he claimed “might function successfully.”4 He is one of the few scholars who has argued, on essentially individualist grounds, not just for “limited” government but for anarchy. He took up the hardest case to tilt against, when he admitted that, “Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced.”5 In the face of this most plausible of views, Rothbard has persistently argued “that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can satisfactorily and efficiently be supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.”6

Yet it is curious that Rothbard does not really argue against governments as such but against the state. Government is, of course, often identified with the state, but in the major statists of political theory—Plato, Hegel, Rousseau, Marx, Green, et al.—the state loomed far larger than government alone. I would argue—and have done so elsewhere7—that in the end the kind of institution that Rothbard believes would arise “on the free market,” in order to provide the “necessary services of protection” of individual rights from domestic and foreign threats, is not like the coercive states of these major statist thinkers but closer to Rothbard’s “private, ‘anarchistic,’ voluntary courts.”8 My major caveat is that the kind of competition we witness in free markets would obtain in a very subtle manner between “competing” governments. To wit, they would compete for citizens, somewhat as apartment complexes compete for tenants. In any case, having said something about a point of difference between Professor Rothbard’s libertarianism and my own, let me hasten to turn to a more productive endeavor.

I want to address the question, “Why do governments appear to have the right to be coercive?” We are not asking whether governments may use force. Force is not necessarily coercive, only when it violates individual rights. But clearly many think that governments do have the authority to be coercive. What is there in morality that appears to give governments permission to do what private persons may not—e.g., to conscript, tax, license, regulate, inspect us, and so forth?

This question is of interest here because the argument Rothbard sometimes invokes against coercion would appear to be absolutely decisive for anyone who takes issues of morality seriously, the very matter on which most people rest their case for a coercive state. In his defense of Frank S. Meyer as essentially a libertarian rather than a “fusionist” thinker, Rothbard notes that Meyer’s “most important contribution to conservatism was his emphasis that to be virtuous in any meaningful sense, a man’s actions must be free.”9 Then he adds the categorical statement that “no action can be virtuous unless it is freely chosen.”10 In this Rothbard echoes the dramatic statement of Ayn Rand, that “morality ends where a gun begins.”11 If a just society must protect the morally good life, it cannot be one that is systematically (rather than accidentally) coercive.

Yet despite what seems to be an elementary point about the nature of justice, innumerable political thinkers from Plato to George Will and Ronald Dworkin sanction coercion by governments, supposedly in defense of such noble moral ideals as virtue and justice. It won’t do to simply dismiss this saying that such people want power and invoke specious arguments to support it. The fact cannot be evaded that many persons with no such designs at all have found these arguments convincing. It behooves us, then, to seek out some understanding of the power behind such statist arguments, ones that essentially sanction state coercion.

America’s Politics and the Coercive State

The most widespread coercion by governments is taxation. There are other, more specific forms of coercion, such as military conscription, mandatory licensing of professions, and government regulation of business. Anyone aware of current socio-political life knows about this and most of us have personal experience with it. Why do these measures win moral approval?

We should note from the start that most thoughtful people in the United States and indeed in most of Western culture find the coerciveness of the state somewhat lamentable. In short, they find it a necessary evil, and wish it didn’t have to be. But there are others who think differently and indeed see it as a virtue of governments to be coercive. Some are quite forthright about their support of “statecraft as soulcraft”12 and believe that soulcraft requires a good dosage of coercion. Others try to smuggle coercion into our culture by labelling it something else, such as “justice.”13 Still others believe that government coercion is really the use of force on behalf of a certain kind of freedom—they call it positive freedom or respect for welfare rights or the right to equal respect as a person.14 Here it is difficult to spot the doctrine of coercion because it is obscured by conceptual muddles.

Most people know that the American political tradition rests on ideals which morally prohibit coercion. So in order to make room for it in our moral consciousness, it has to be re-christened, in an Orwellian “newspeak” fashion. Coercive government had been the nemesis of not just the Founding Fathers but especially of John Locke, whose views largely undergird the political thought of the United States of America.15

Locke’s philosophical ground for opposing coercion of one person by another had been that he regarded individual human beings as by nature morally free, independent, and equal. This means that he regarded us all, in adulthood, as responsible to make our own decisions or choices in life. Thus no adult is inherently subject to the authority of another. This also means that we are all politically equal. That, indeed, is the only egalitarianism inherent in the American political tradition. (It is also clear from this why Murray Rothbard would regard himself a Lockean and what he means by “self-ownership.”16)

From this basic frame of reference a conception of government arose which regards the state as an institution of laws administered by a group of “elected (hired)” persons who are essentially “employed” by those who hire them, the people. The authority to make use of force on the citizens comes, roughly, as does the authority of a referee at a tennis game or on a basketball court—through the consent of the participants. The courts, the police, the legislature, the armed forces, and so forth are seen to be agents of the people. Here, too, the theory of government within the Lockean framework is not different from the theory of a “private, ‘anarchistic,’ voluntary” system of rights protection Rothbard endorses.

The precise way in which the use of force can be authorized is a complicated matter.17 In any case, for John Locke and many of the founders of this political society, government should use force only if the citizens consented to having it used on them and only to the extend that the citizens themselves are justified in using it. That is what “due process of law” really means, namely, that government is justified in the use of force only if it adheres to specific standards.

Aggressive use of force, or coercion, is not sanctioned by the political philosophy which supported the American system of government, even if subsequent practice has diverged from it. (Indeed, the U.S. Constitution is itself a compromised document as far as the principles spelled out in the Declaration of Independence are concerned. But there is nothing mysterious about why in a given community the practical arm of the dominant political ideal might embody serious inconsistencies.)

Now, prior to when the revolutionary idea of free and limited government took hold on a large enough population so as to make a political difference, the coercive state had been looked upon with great favor by those who wielded the power of the pen. Locke himself forged his own views against the paternalistic political ideals of Sir Robert Filmer.

Sadly, however, not long after Locke’s ideas flourished, once again the coercive state appeared to gain the support of moral philosophy. So the career of the free society, whereby government was to have been restricted to noncoercive use of feree, was short lived, not only in practice (where it had never been complete), but also as a respectable idea.

Clearly, the dominant post-Lockean moral and political theory has been supportive of the coercive state. It will be worthwhile to consider then the features of moral theories and systems which so insistently seem to not just sanction or tolerate but eagerly to endorse government coercion, even following a most powerful and earthshaking rejection of this idea in Western history, namely, the birth of the United States. Why does the use of aggressive force appear once again, as in the past, to have the support of morality?

A Few Words on Morality

Why morality?18 We need to know a bit about this so as to understand why our question is really very important. If one were to regard morality as quite dispensable, then one would not need to be very disturbed if many moral systems give credence to coercion. One could simply reject morality through and through, as indeed have some who take an exclusively social scientific (e.g., economic) view of human life.

Persons, unlike other beings, must choose what they will do and they can choose badly or well. Morality is the most basic code or set of standards by which one can determine whether a choice is a good or a bad one. However much we might wish to dispense with morality, so long as human beings lack innate guidance to their conduct, it will be in vain to try. The economist’s attempt to reduce everything to “workability,” “usefulness,” “practicality,” or “efficiency” just won’t work, since each of these invite the question, “For what purpose?” Thus something can only be judged workable if we know the purpose it is to serve. When it comes to assessing the merits of goals or purposes, it cannot be sufficient to talk of workability or efficiency. Something else is required, namely, “Is it a good, just, virtuous purpose we are talking about or is it something morally questionable?”

One could embark on lengthy discussions about the reasons for all this. E.g., what is it about human nature, reality in general, that gives choice such a basic role in our lives, how compatible is having to make choices with science, etc? But that would take us too far afield.

What we now need to do is to see something of various moral systems so that we can tell why so many of them give support to coercion. In the end when we concern ourselves with public policy, the most serious issue is whether it meets standards of morality. Much else may be important, especially in a democracy. But in the end any public policy that is morally approved will have a far greater likelihood of success with policy makers than one which goes against the moral grain. For this reason the case against coercion needs to stand for morality. And for this reason, too, the case for it has always appeared to do so.

Morality and Coercion

Most of us know a bit about how much controversy there exists about moral systems. Moral skepticism has indeed done very well, partly because so little firm agreement can be found in this area. I will not try to refute moral skepticism here. I would like to suggest, however, that when we deal with a field in which one’s very own quality as a person is at stake, and given the wide variety that exists in the quality of human beings, there should be no wonder about all the controversy. We are all inclined to paint ourselves pretty, morally speaking. It is understandable that sometimes we would even stoop to adjusting morality itself so as to make ourselves, our own chosen goals, etc., seem morally justified. As a last resort we may even deny that there is any moral truth, just so that we escape having its wrath fall upon us.

In any case, what is crucial to note is that within moral systems certain components tend to give rise to coercion. In a nutshell, it is the value component of moral systems that gives rise to coercion.

One may find this difficult to understand. Doesn’t every moral system have a value component? Then wouldn’t every moral system support coercion?

Actually, only those moral systems support coercion which fail to place their value components in the proper human context. Let me explain.

Every moral system requires a theory of the good. Even before we can talk about what human beings ought to do—which is the main concern of any morality—the question has to be answered: “What is our goal? What is the point of conduct in the first place?” A theory of the good provides our answer to this.

If our goal is the collective happiness of humankind, then when we wish to know that we ought to do, we need only to answer the technical or practical question: “Whatever will promote the collective happiness of humankind?” If it’s God’s will, then again we ought to obey it. If it is our self-interest, then again we need to know and follow it, and so forth. In short, a moral system presupposes a theory of the good which identifies our proper goal in life and for which morality enables us to reach.

Now, whenever a moral system lays exaggerated emphasis on its theory of the good—forgetting something else, to which I’ll turn in a moment—which, of course, is vital to it, it is likely to encourage coercion. In utilitarian morality, for example, extreme stress can be placed on the greatest happiness of the greatest number (with happiness usually understood as well-being or pleasure or wealth). The good is seen as the overall well-being of humanity or members of a society. In most religious moralities various forms of behavior are seen as the manifestation of goodness and the realization of such behavior is then regarded as the goal which moral conduct must pursue.

Let me note here that although Soviet Marxism supposedly gains much of its support from science, in fact a basic theory about values is most crucial to it, as it is to every political outlook. In the Marxist-socialist conception of the state, the most powerful underlying justification relies on a vital evaluative component, namely, the summum bonum of labor.

Now, any morality can lay extreme stress on its ultimate goal, at the expense of another crucial feature morality must possess. And this can be transferred to public policy within any human community.

Morality and Coercive Public Policy

If, as far as personal ethics is concerned, a moral system gives primary emphasis to goals, it is also likely to stress goals as far as public policy is concerned. Suppose that the members of a society morally prize helping the poor (or social harmony or economic stability or prosperity or spiritual and military superiority). In each case, public policy will very likely be geared toward the attainment of these ends, regardless of (or at least with little regard for) the means by which this is to be brought about.

A good example is ecological purity. It is prized highly by many, indeed regarded by them to be a supreme moral goal. So all forms of coercion are seen to be justified in its behalf. Because coercion seems such an efficient method for certain limited purposes—after all, force is the primary instrument of efficiency in classical mechanics and of much of modern technology—such an emphasis on achieving ends will promote its use.

To summarize my points thus far, first we need to appreciate the vital role morality has in human life and in the justification of public policy; second we need to note that the theory of the good which every moral system presupposes can be emphasized in a way that lays primary stress on the achievement of goals—or, to use Robert Nozick’s term, “end-states.”19 This, then, gives support to the instrument of coercion in the attainment of various public purposes.

What we now need to see is why this is all a very serious mistake and why it is indeed a distortion of morality. It is clear that Murray Rothbard was aware of the point, yet it will be useful to explain again that morality, rightly understood, does not support the use of coercion but, on the contrary, requires its abolition.

Freedom of Choice and Morality

As distinct from the theory of the good within every moral system, morality must also be concerned with the specifically human mode of the good. What is this?

To answer, let us remember that there is goodness in connection with all life. Botanists, zoologists, and biologists are all involved in evaluations, judging things to be good or bad. This is because the best theory of the good links goodness to the phenomenon of life. It is the perishable nature of life that gives goodness a role in existence. For things which cannot perish, the idea of the good is inapplicable. But for living things there can be conditions, processes, etc., that are good and ones that are bad. It depends on how they further or thwart life.

But regarding all life other than human life, to the best of our knowledge there can be no concern about moral goodness. The reason is that all such life lacks the unique volitional element, or the feature which we have come to know by the terms “freedom of the will.”

Since the time of Aristotle20 it should have been understood very clearly that as far as morality is concerned, freedom of choice is essential. Human nature is such that the human good is inseparable from each individual’s having to choose what constitutes his or her good conduct. If some goal or purpose is indeed right for us, we are morally right pursuing it strictly speaking only if we see the point of its value and choose it. Our own moral character, which is our highest good—our very excellence as persons—flourishes if and only if the good behavior we engage in, the good ends we promote, the good states of affairs we bring about, are all a matter of choice.

We can here consider a wonderful mental exercise presented to us by Murray Rothbard:

Suppose, for a moment, that we define a virtuous act as bowing in the direction of Mecca every day at sunset. We attempt to persuade everyone to perform this act. But suppose that instead of relying on voluntary conviction we employ a vast number of police to break into everyone’s home and see to it that every day they are pushed down to the floor in the direction of Mecca. No doubt by taking such measures we will increase the number of people bowing toward Mecca. But by forcing them to do so, we are taking them out of the realm of action and into mere motion, and we are depriving all these coerced persons of the very possibility of acting morally. By attempting to compel virtue, we eliminate its possibility. For by compelling everyone to bow to Mecca, we are preventing people from doing so out of freely adopted conviction. To be moral, an act must be free.21

Without the element of choice, our type of involvement with values is no different from that of other living things that behave from instinct or innate drives. Dogs, plants, birds, forests, and so forth are not moral agents. How they behave is a matter open for evaluation, but not for moral praise or blame. The reason is that such living things are incapable of choice. It is irrelevant to their goodness or good behavior (flourishing, thriving, health) whether their behavior is chosen. And this is precisely what sets us apart from them, first and foremost.

Accordingly, those moralities which fail to pay sufficient heed to this are not just wrong but fundamentally eskewed. When choice is taken away from a moral system’s conception of human goodness, it ceases to be a moral system proper. It can still be a system of values, of course, but not of basic human values.

Conclusion

The basic moral support for the coercive state then is the failure to remember that morality is a system of principles serving a basic human purpose, namely, to enable human individuals to be good as human individuals. To even approach being a successful moral theory, this feature of free choice must be included within a moral system. For example, if utilitarianism becomes overly concerned with the general welfare or if any religious ethics sees some rituals or forms of behavior as having a priority over the fact that these rituals and forms of behavior must be chosen for them to give merit to human individuals, then these systems are actually pseudo-moralities or mere value theories, aiming at identifying good things, but not the human good.

The coercive state is not then founded on any bona fide moral system but on systems which try but fail to be moral systems. Their failure to embody not just values but also free choice that must be involved in seeking these makes bad candidates for moral systems.

No public policy can live long if it loses its moral standing. The coercive state has lost it from the start.22

Notes

1. Murray N. Rothbard, “Frank S. Meyer: The Fusionist as Libertarian Manque,” in G. Carey, ed., Freedom and Virtue, The Conservative /Libertarian Debate (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984), p. 106.

2. Ibid., p. 96.

3. Ibid., p. 106.

4. Murray N. Rothbard, “Society Without a State,” in Tibor R. Machan, ed., The Libertarian Reader (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982), p. 53.

5. Ibid., p. 55.

6. Ibid.

7. Tibor R. Machan, Human Rights and Human Liberties (Chicago: Nelson-Hall Co., 1975); idem., “Dissolving the Problem of Public Goods: Financing Government Without Coercive Measures,” in The Libertarian Reader.

8. Rothbard, “Society Without a State,” p. 58.

9. Rothbard, “Frank S. Meyer,” p. 92.

10. Ibid, p. 93.

11. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (New York: Random House, 1957), p. 1023.

12. The phrase comes from the most recent conservative defense of the coercive state, George Will, Statecraft as Soulcraft (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982). Will defends his statism by reference to Aristotle’s alleged wholehearted support of statism. There is reason to think, however, that even in this historical reference, let alone in substance, Will has got it wrong. The polis is not the same as the state. See, Fred D. Miller, Jr., “The State and Community in Aristotle’s Politics,” Reason Papers, 1 (1974). See, also, Tibor R. Machan, “An Aristotelian Foundation for Natural Rights?” This World, 11 (Summer 1985).

13. In the end this is what must be said about John Rawls’s monumental work, A Theory of Justice Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971).

14. See, e.g., Patricia Werhane, Persons, Rights & Corporations (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1985); Allen Gewirth, Reason and Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977). I discuss some attempts to transform the meaning of rights to imply enablement or empowerment by means of coercive redistribution of assets and endowments in my “Wronging Rights,” Policy Review 17 (Summer 1981): 37-58. See, also, my “Moral Myths and Basic Positive rights,” Tulane Studies in Philosophy (1985).

15. There is debate about just how much direct influence Locke had on the polity of the United States. I will just stand with those who, quite plausibly at least, argue that the Declaration of Independence contains a great deal of vital substance that is distinctively Lockean—e.g., the doctrine of natural rights, the right of popular revolution.

16. Murray N. Rothbard, “Justice and Property Rights,” in Samuel L. Blumenfeld, Property in a Humane Economy (LaSalle, 111.: Open Court, 1974).

17. Tibor R. Machan, “Individualism and the Problem of Political Authority,” The Monist 66 (1983): 500-16. In this paper I discuss some of the Rothbardian anarchist objections to government.

18. I discuss this issue in considerable detail in my “The Classical Egoist Basis of Capitalism,” in T. R. Machan, ed., The Main Debate: Communism versus Capitalism (New York: Random House, 1987). My answer draws a good deal from what I have learned from Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” in The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (New York: New American Library, 1964); and from Eric Mack, “How to Derive Ethical Egoism?” The Personalist 52 (1971).

19. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), passim.

20. Machan, “An Aristotelian Foundation for Natural Rights?” The point is that Aristotle said that “the virtues are modes of choice or involve choice” (Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, chap. 5, 1106a4). Now he also said a lot that suggests that he supports “soulcraft,” i.e., political means by which to habituate citizens into a virtuos life. Yet even here argument abounds as to whether such legislation would involve forcing citizens to behave in virtuous ways or offering them the opportunity to do so.

21. Rothbard, “Frank S. Meyer,” p. 93.

22. My work on this essay was made possible by support from the Reason and the Progress Foundations, for which I wish to express my thanks.