Statism is Not the Finest
A stateless society is a general public that isn't administered by a state, or, has no government.
In stateless social orders, there is little centralization of power; most places of power that do exist are extremely restricted in power and are commonly not for all time held positions; and social bodies that settle debates through predefined rules will in general be little.
It isn't logical to decline to progress from one imperfect method for getting things done to another better way basically in light of the fact that the new way isn't great. Self-driving vehicles don't have to have zero accidents, they just need to have less accidents than autos driven by individuals to be an improvement. In like manner, a stateless society would not be a perfect utopia; a few people would in any case carry out crimes and hurt others. It would be essentially better than the state of affairs, in any case, in light of the fact that the people who carry out these violations would bear all the responsibility regarding them as opposed to arguing they were "simply following orders."
Under a state the cost of violence is dispersed; when the government or ruler of a country wants to do violence against someone, he does not have to pay for it. He simply charges his subjects for the violence he wishes to commit. In a stateless society, you have to pay for your own violence—both the cost of initiating it and the cost of reparations if you lose or are caught. For this reason alone, a stateless society is preferable to a state.
Obviously, there are numerous different manners by which a stateless society is better than a state.
In addition to the increased cost of violence, there is the loss of the presumption of legitimacy which the state and its enforcers currently enjoy. In the event that a law enforcement officer and another person get into a gunfight, the (close to all inclusive) assumption is that the law implementation official was morally justified and whoever endeavored to oppose him was off base. (Interestingly, this tendency is reduced when the story originates in a different country.) Under a stateless society, there is no such assumption. If two people get into a gunfight, there will be questions about the evidence and appeals to the character and history of the individuals involved. Again, not a perfect scenario, but a very real improvement to life under a state.
The state is evil because it hurts people and takes their stuff. The state is doubly evil because many people believe it has a right to do these things. It is this belief which allows the state to do so much evil to so many people without triggering a revolution. In a stateless environment, some people will still choose to hurt people and take their stuff, but everyone will recognize that these actions are wrong. That's the fundamental advantage of statelessness.
I'm often accused of being a "utopian" for advocating the abolition of the state. I'm told it could never work and that another state would eventually take its place. To me that argument is like saying you shouldn't try to remove a cancerous tumor because you'll probably just get cancer again. Possibly, but you already have cancer, so how exactly is that a disincentive?
Robert Higgs, a professor and philosopher, put it this way:
"Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a 'Great Leap Forward' that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children. In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy's mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state's mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous."
I'm not suggesting that life without a state will be perfect. People will still make bad choices and nature will still f*** with us every now and then just to remind us that it can. What I am saying with absolute conviction is that liberty is better than slavery. The system we have now is slavery in all but name, and the remedy to this deplorable condition is the abolition of these institutions based on violence and coercion that we call states. The future is ours for the taking if we will only wake up and seize it. I'm ready. Are you?
Statists always want to make the crime argument when talking about anarchist belief systems but
In a quote I found from Gary Chartier, which defines crime as a statist notion, I found the willingness to make some more points in this article but first to the words of Gary Chartier.
“Crime is a statist notion: crimes were first against the person of the king; then, in the king’s absence, the modern state claimed to be the victim of criminal conduct. The very existence of the criminal law, which severs the link between legal liability and harm, makes possible an ongoing reign of terror. Zealots and bigots can make the ordinary taxpayer who doesn’t share their goals bear the burden of funding the realization of these goals. Police violence and broken lives are predictable consequences of the War on (Some) Drugs, with members of minority communities suffering vast and disproportionate losses. A culture of retribution breeds brutal penalties and a prison system that stunts people’s lives and, increasingly, channels vast sums of money into the pockets of the state’s corporate cronies in the private prison industry. The criminal justice system is a creature of the state and neither the system nor its destructiveness would be realistically conceivable in the state’s absence.”
I don't foresee a future of new human beings who consistently respect the rights of others. Rather, I'm drawing attention to the distinction between crime and tort — between offenses against the state (or society) and offenses against individual persons or their justly held property. We're so used to this distinction, and the priority of the criminal law over tort law, that most of us don't realize that things used to be different. At one time, an "offense" that was not an act of force against an individual was not an offense at all.
What happened? In England, the early kings recognized that the administration of justice could be a cash cow. So they grabbed on and never let go. As a result, the emphasis shifted to punishment (fines and imprisonment) and away from restitution (making victims or their heirs as whole as possible).
Liberty-minded people should regret this change. Yet again, the ruling elite exploited the people. It needed wealth to buy war materiel and allegiance, so it took it by force from the laboring masses, and corrupted the justice system in the process.
In The Enterprise of Law, Bruce Benson explains that before the royal preemption, customary law prevailed in England. One feature of this spontaneous order was that
“Offenses are treated as torts (private wrongs and injuries) rather than crimes (offenses against the state or the "society"). A potential action by one person has to affect someone else before any question of legality can arise; any action that does not, such as what a person does alone or in voluntary cooperation with someone else but in manner that clearly harms no one, is not likely to become the subject of a rule of conduct under customary law.”
Benson also notes that
“prosecutorial duties fall to the victim and his reciprocal protection association. Thus, the law provides for restitution to victims arrived at through clearly designed participatory adjudication procedures, in order to both provide incentives to pursue prosecution and to quell victims' desires for revenge.”
In such a system of law, one was not likely to see "offenses" without true victims. Since cooperation through reciprocity is key to the success of customary law, the system is likely to be kept within narrow libertarian-ish limits.
This arrangement worked out fairly well — until would-be rulers, who needed money to finance wars of conquest and buy loyalty by dispensing tax-funded jobs, discovered that there was gold to be had in the administration of justice.
The idea of the "king's peace" started small but eventually expanded to all of society. The incentive was obvious. Violations of the king's peace required payment to the king. As customary law was co-opted by the crown, the concept felony, arbitrariness in punishment, and imprisonment came to the administration of "justice." The people were not pleased with the shifting focus from victims to king and his cronies, so they had to be compelled to cooperate.
For example, royal law imposed coercive rules declaring that the victim was a criminal if he obtained restitution before he brought the offender before a king's justice where the king could get his profits. This was not a strong enough inducement, so royal law created the crimes of "theftbote," making it a misdemeanor for a victim to accept the return of stolen property or to make other arrangements with a felon in exchange for an agreement not to prosecute.
By the end of the reign of Edward I [1307], the basic institutions of government law had been established, and in many instances older custom had been altered or replaced by authoritarian rules to facilitate the transfer of wealth to relatively powerful groups. "Public interest" justifications for a government-dominated legal system and institutions must be viewed as ex postrationalizations rather than as ex ante explanations of their development.
Thus the criminal justice system as we know it is a product of state arrogation and a repudiation of individualism. This perverse approach to law was inherited by the representative democracies that succeeded the absolute monarchies in England and then America.
For reasons too obvious to need elaboration, a system of justice aimed at restitution makes eminently good sense. Someone is wronged, so the perpetrator should, to the extent possible, make things right. (In the case of murder, the victim's heirs would have a monetary claim against the killer; in the case of an heirless victim, the claim could be homesteaded by anyone who puts the effort into identifying and prosecuting the killer.)
At the same time, the principle of restitution undercuts the case for punishment, correction, and deterrence as objectives of the justice system. The point isn't to make perpetrators suffer or to reform them or to make potential perpetrators think twice. What good are these for the present victim? Correction and deterrence may be natural byproducts of a system of restitution, but they are not proper objectives, for where could a right to do more than require restitution come from?
Violence is so destructive of the conditions required by a community that facilitates human flourishing that its use is justifiable only when necessary to protect innocent life or to make victims whole. Thus it cannot be legitimate to use force to punish, reform, or deter. (Private nonviolent acts — for example, shunning — can have a proper role here. Also, a perpetrator who demonstrates that he is a continuing threat might legitimately be confined for reasons of self-defense.)
Punishment is wrong, Roderick Long writes, because "after all, we do not think that those who violate others' rights accidentally should be made to suffer; but the only difference between a willing aggressor and an accidental aggressor lies in the contents of their thoughts — a matter over which the law has no legitimate jurisdiction." (To my knowledge, Randy Barnett is the first libertarian of our era to lay out the case for a restitution-only system of justice.)
As Gary Chartier concludes in Anarchy and Legal Order, "Because there is no warrant for executions or punitive fines, and no warrant for restraint (which need not involve imprisonment) except as a matter of self-defense and the defense of others, there is no need for the distinctive institutions and practices of the criminal justice system."
In a free society, crimes against person and property would be treated like torts. This would be a welcome change in a society that imprisons more people than any other, often for nonviolent and victimless "crimes."
In The Descent of Man, [Charles Darwin] gave some powerful pages to illustrate its proper, wide sense. He pointed out how, in numberless animal societies, the struggle between separate individuals for the means of existence disappears, how struggle is replaced by co-operation, and how that substitution results in the development of intellectual and moral faculties which secure to the species the best conditions for survival. He intimated that in such cases the fittest are not the physically strongest, nor the cunningest, but those who learn to combine so as to mutually support each other, strong and weak alike, for the welfare of the community. “Those communities”, he wrote, “which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring” (2nd edit., p. 163).
— Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor In Evolution, 1902.
Anarchists believe that we are all born free, that no one can tell us what to do or how to think, and that we are always solely responsible for our own actions. For everyone to peacefully coexist in a free society and have an opportunity to get out of life what they put into it everyone must be entitled to life, liberty, and the fruits of their labor and no one should be allowed to take these things away from anyone else. Crime is any action which would deprive someone of equal access to these things. An Anarchist society recognizes only three types of crime: (1) Chauvinistic Crimes, (2) Economic Crimes, and (3) Violent Crimes. Chauvinistic Crimes are those actions that deprive us of freedom or the fruits of our labor because of social prejudices, religious dogma, or personal malice or animosity. Economic crimes are those that deprive us of the fruits of our labor by theft, fraud, or vandalism. Violent crimes are those that deprive us of our life, freedom, or the fruits of our labor through deadly force, physical abuse, or coercion.
Anarchists also believe that most crime is a product of social deprivations, inequalities, and abuses inherent to Authoritarian, Capitalistic, and Chauvinistic socioeconomic systems. By doing away with these systems we can begin to do away with the problems they create. But, there will still be people who want to exploit and victimize others for their own personal satisfaction as well as some reactionaries who want to establish a new system of domination, exploitation, and social control. To deal with these criminal personalities a society must be able to segregate them from the general population so they cannot harm anyone.
Too often the term justice has been abused to imply retribution, punishment, correction or other forms of coercion or social control. Anarchists believe that the only true justice lies in personal freedom. In a free society the need is to protect the society from crime without obstructing freedom of choice. Anarchists are not interested in vengeance, only peace. Therefore, our goal is to insure social peace by segregating those who threaten it rather than debating and imposing an arbitrary view of justice based upon the whims and ambitions of parliamentarians, bureaucrats, and autocratic jurists.
Its aobut cooperation rather than competition, direct democracy rather than authority, and mutual aid rather than policement. These are the basis of the Anarchist system of social peace. Historically, Anarchist societies have replaced professional military and police forces with a part time popular militia which looks out for the safety of the community and would take a person accused of a crime and their accuser before a popular tribunal where any dispute could be arbitrated and any criminal act could be adjudicated and rectified. The militias work much like a neighborhood watch except they serve the community rather than being an instrument of police control and manipulation over the community. Popular tribunals work much like binding arbitration in a labor dispute. Popular militias are made up of volunteers from the community and are delegated their responsibility by the community who can revoke it at will. They are delegated the responsibility of bringing conflicting parties or accused persons and accusers before a tribunal but, it is the tribunal that is responsible for questioning them as soon as they are apprehended. Tribunals are groups selected at random from members of the community by lottery. They function much like a jury in hearing evidence and making a decision based on that evidence. No person should be convicted of a crime without evidence against them. Since the standards of the community are simple, the delegated responsibilities of tribunals are simple. It is simply their delegated responsibility to determine who did what to whom. The community at large decides the term of banishment for violent crimes based on their severity and threat to the community. If a person feels they have been treated unfairly they have the right to seek arbitration.
In a modern society we must expect the need for forensic and detective collectives to investigate major crimes. These would work with local militias whenever a crime was discovered but, not witnessed. The types of crime that would fall under this heading would be murders, burglaries, and violent or economic crimes where the perpetrator or perpetrators concealed their identities. Forensic and detective collectives would serve several communities. In an anarchist society, crimes requiring investigation would be rare, but must be pursued quickly because anyone so predatory as to do such things must be quickly segregated from society to protect the community.
Anarchist communities are protected by mutual aid rather than a police state. Since the safety of all people in the community is dependent on zero tolerance to violent predatory behavior, all members of the community cooperate to identify such incidents so the individuals involved can be dealt with. This value is instilled in all members of the community beginning when they can first begin to understand “getting along with each other” as young children and everyone is held accountable for their actions regardless of age. To discourage violence among the young, competition is discouraged in favor of personal progression and individuals are encouraged to specialize their learning in areas of personal interest after they master basic communication and arithmetic skills. Progress is based on demonstrating aptitude rather than the age of a student.
A community is a group of free individuals who cooperate to achieve a quality of life greater than what they could achieve separately. The community members have the right to protect their community and must take responsibility for doing so. They also have the responsibility of respecting each others freedom. This value must be instilled in children as they grow up. All members of the community must recognize that their participation in the community is subject to this value and that they will be held accountable by other community members if they violate this trust.
Not long ago there was a time when being banished from a community meant expulsion to large expanses of land between frontier towns, feudal merchant centers, or city states. In those areas a person had to fend for themselves and they were at the mercy of any predator (human or animal) who came upon them until they could come into another community who would agree to accept them. These islands of sanctuary were all independent and many areas were beyond their influence. In a modern society with most of the world populated and communities mostly adjacent to each other there are no more frontiers to which a person can be banished where they will not still be in the same society. There are no city gates where a person would be instantly recognized as an undesirable and locked out. If we release a predator, we release them to prey on someone else. In an Anarchist society where violent crime will become increasingly rare, the number of violent criminals will be a lot less than it is now. Since we cannot banish them to a frontier, we must banish them to the only artificial frontier which exists: the prison system. Their limited numbers will actually enable the society to incarcerate all its violent criminals without any early release that might threaten the society.
Since banishment must mean incarceration in modern society, incarceration will necessarily concentrate the most violent elements of society and place a demand for resources on the community to feed, clothe, and shelter those who are banished. It would be as immoral for those banished to be parasites on the society as it is for capitalists and other economic criminals. It is therefore necessary that centers of incarceration fully compensate for the resources they consume and be fully self-sufficient whenever possible. This can best be accomplished by allowing those who are banished to have limited liberty within the prison in exchange for contributing useful labor to their prison community. It is not likely that the most violent people in society can be contained and organized to sustain themselves without some coercion and social control. We must therefore concede that those who reject the benefits of the Anarchist society and chose to live apart from it should not expect Anarchist benevolence when they are banished. Neither should they expect punishment or rehabilitation. Those who are banished must be denied visitation from the Anarchist society which they have rejected. For all practical purposes they are dead.
However, Anarchists do not believe in a death penalty for any crime. First, death is not a corrective measure. When a person is killed, it in no way changes the act of the violent criminal nor makes the people anymore safe than merely segregating the violent criminal. Therefore, the death penalty is merely a political act. Its sole function is to enable the government to legally murder someone as an example to a group of people it wishes to coerce for reasons beyond the interest of public safety. Second, death is not a deterrent. It is impossible to use the threat of violence to coerce a determined violent criminal into not committing an act of violence because violence is either spontaneous or premeditated. People who go to the trouble to plan crimes of violence do not believe they will be caught. Some people may feel that segregation of violent criminals is somehow inhumane but, only the most inhumane individuals will require segregation. This is especially true of the criminally insane who pose an even greater threat to the social peace than premeditated killers. Any prison system which remains must have a special facility for the criminally insane. All criminally insane violent criminals will have to be kept in isolation. Anarchists believe that a society with social justice and free mental health care will greatly reduce the number of mentally ill people, including those who are criminally insane.
The best disposition for those who are incarcerated is to be held separately for sleeping purposes and released for daily work periods. Those who do not chose to work should remain in isolation. Large areas of incarceration facilities should be devoted to food production for use at the facility. Hard work at the facility makes the time pass more quickly and uses up a person’s energy so there is less violence between those who are incarcerated. Those who endanger the lives of other people in the prison should not be allowed on work details. We cannot expect incarceration facilities to be self-sustaining. They will be a liability the community will just have to accept as part of the price of their freedom. In an Anarchist society the number of people who are banished and incarcerated would be only a fraction of those incarcerated under the legal, economic, and social system that now exists.
Anarchist societies do not come into being over night. We must accept that many of the bad people from the old capitalist, authoritarian, and chauvinistic society will still be around when an Anarchist society is still in the process of being organized. An Anarchist society must be prepared for many of these people to reject the new society and must set an example with them that the Anarchist society is both more fair and more uncompromising in dealing with issues of crime and social peace. We must be prepared to liberate all those who are now incarcerated for actions no longer treated as criminal and act without mercy in incarcerating all those who will not respect the social peace in the new Anarchist society. We must accept that it may take a few generations of experience in the new society and a lot of incarcerations before the society at large is purged of the bad influences of capitalism, authoritarianism, and chauvinism. It is the ultimate goal of an Anarchist society to do away with prisons altogether. We can begin by releasing all those unnecessarily incarcerated under the current system and closing those prisons where they were held. Afterwards, as society is transformed and prison populations dwindle we can systematically close and dismantle all the remaining prisons as the need to banish violent criminals is minimized.