The Necessity of Government; D. Kelley

For this reason, anarchism is held by many to be a simple-minded theory. By many on the right, how ever, it is held to be merely a sim plification of their basic princi ples, with all the appeal of such simplicity. For libertarians believe that government has fewer proper functions than it currently as sumes, in this country and others; and when the so-called free mar ket anarchists say that govern ment has no proper function, it is often thought that they are merely taking the principle of liberty, with great rigor if little wisdom, to a logical extreme. And this image of the anarchist as a logiMr. Kelley is a graduate student in philosophy at Princeton University. cal purist, as a friend of rigor though the skies fall, is also culti vated very assiduously by the an archists themselves. But the image, I suggest, is an illusion. Logic, like virtue, is something of which one cannot have an excess; but anarchism is distinguished by its lack of that quality. Its anti pathy to law apparently extends even to the laws of thought.

The first and most basic failure of the anarchist logic is its fail ure to notice a crucial distinction. An anarchist is one who wishes to place coercion, the use of force and the ability to use it, on the market. The use of force to prevent the initiation of force against its cit izens is the basic function of gov ernment, and the essence of "free market" anarchism is to hold that this service should be on the mar ket, like any other. In holding this view, anarch~sts overlook a cru cial difference between this coer cive service, and all other econom ic goods and services. The distinctive feature of coer243 244 THE FREEMAN April cion derives from the position of values in the market place. Values are, in the first instance, the-sub ject of moral philosophy, whose task it is to discover their nature, and to formulate the proper stand ards for evaluating goods and ac tions, means and ends. This task is one of discovery, because values are objective. It is a fact that some things are values whereas others are not; it is a fact that some things are more valuable than others. In a free market and a free society, however, individuals may pursue whatever ends they choose, regardless of whether they really are valuable; and they may appor tion their time and money to things in ways that mayor may not reflect the relative importance of these values. People can and of course should take moral consid erations into account, but nothing compels them to do so.

Despite the protestations of statists from Plato onward, there is no contradiction here. For in a free society, the actions of one per son do not restrict the proper lib erty of another, including his lib erty to act morally. One has no right, therefore, to restrict the ac tions of someone just because they are immoral. In a free market, the production and trade of economic goods are determined by individ ual value preferences; and whether these are moral or immoral, rational or irrational, the exchanges of economic goods to which they give rise do not violate anyone's right ful freedom - that is to say, his rights. Your enjoyment of your rights is not endangered by my misuse of mine. If this were not the case, then to the extent that it were n.ot, the market would have to be regulated by some institution outside the market: for the mar ket is unjustifiable if it allows the violation of individual rights. For tunately, the market as we know it does not allow this, and requires no outside regulation - with the exception of a single economic good: coercion.

Coercion J5 Different The use of coercion against criminals and foreign aggressors is a service, one provided by the gov ernment to its citizens. As such it may be considered an economic good. But it differs from all other economic goods in just the respect mentioned. When its use is morally improper, it does violate individual rights. Coercion, in this world, must sometimes be exercis ed. Given the existence of crim inals, and the constant possibility that some men will prefer crim inal to honest means and ends, the existence of a power to prevent and punish this by force has a certain value. Its value is re stricted, however, by the moral 1974 THE NECESSITY OF GOVERNMENT 245 principle forbidding its use against persons who have not themselves used force against others. If this power is exercised improperly, if it is not used in accordance with the objective prin ciples that define and delimit its value, then it violates rights - the rights of innocent people, or at least the right of the guilty to have their guilt objectively dem onstrated before suffering punish ment. This is true by the very nature of coercion, and it is true only of coercion.

Coercion, therefore, and coercion alone, falls under the proviso men tioned earlier: since it has the potential for violating rights if used improperly, its use cannot be determined by the value prefer ences people happen to hold, whether right or wrong; and so cannot be determined by market forces. Coercion has a place in social life, but it. must be kept in place; and the market is not the institution to do this. Power to coerce, then, must be reposed in another institution altogether, one outside the market and the sway of subjective value preferences. This institution must have strict control-a monopoly, in effect over the use of force, since its function is to take force off the market. Its use of coercion must be determined solely by rules de rived from the appropriate moral principles; and it must operate in accordance with such rules with out taking into consideration any individual or collective desires to the contrary. This institution all men call government.

The Nature of the Market Here, then, is the first failure of the anarchist logic: it fails to discern that feature of coercion which distinguishes it from the economic goods offered on the market. A second failure concerns the nature of the market itself. It consists in the assumption that the market would exist without the government. Anarchists wish to see the services presently of fered by the government of f ered instead by pri vate "protec tion agencies" competing on the free market. We have seen why this is not appropriate, given the nature of this particular good. We must now question the assumption that in the absence of govern mental institutions outside and protecting the market, a free mar ket would even exist for protection agencies to offer their services in. The free market is one in which all exchanges are voluntary. A person can trade his time, effort, money or goods for those of an other only if the latter is willing.

The economic laws of a free mar ket are true only when or to the extent that this condition obtains.

2.46 THE FREEMAN April Consider, for example, the law of supply and demand. What would happen to prices if one did not have to pay for a good at a price acceptable to the seller, but could take the good by force, giving nothing in exchange? There is no way of telling. The law of supply and demand does not apply to thieves. The economic analysis of the market assumes that the use of force does not occur, tha t all exchanges are mutually acceptable to the parties involved. It assumes, in effect, that the cost of using force is infinite. This assumption is legitimate, for in free market theory there exists an institution outside the market which protects the rights of individuals, and therefore en sures that the principle of volun tary exchange will be observed. This institution may work well or badly, but its working well or badly is not a subject of economic law; it is the concern, rather, of political and legal theory. The government codifies and enforces the rules of the market; it es tablishes a framework of rights and liberties that men must re spect in action. Economic theory then tells us what happens as in dividuals act within that frame work to acquire the things they value. Economic laws are to polit ical laws as principles of strategy are to the rules of a game.

A Dilemma For anarchism, however, all this is changed. Anarchists hold that in their scheme also, force would not be used; coercion would not be a feasible alternative to volun tary exchange. But they cannot assume this in describing the mar ket as they would have it. They cannot assign the problem to an other field, as we do, and say that whatever is necessary to prevent the use of force we shall bring about by consciously designing our institutions to that end. The anarchists would place govern mental services on the market, to be offered by entrepreneurs on the basis of their own value prefer ences and their expectations about the preferences of others. But if so, then they can only try to pre dict what is likely to come about from the interplay of human in terests. If we ask how our rights are to be secured to us in the anarchist system, the anarchist can only answer que sera sera. At best he can try to predict what would happen.

The anarchists, then, have their work cut out for them. They must show how, by the mechanism of the market, things work out in such a way that force is not used. But of course they cannot do this without assuming the existence of a free market, an assumption to which they are not entitled. They 1974 THE NECESSITY OF GOVERNMENT 247 cannot make their case - substan tiate their prediction that force will not be used - without relying on economic laws; but economic laws, as we have seen, are true only on the assumption that all exchange is voluntary, which is the very point at issue. It should, no doubt, be easy to prove that the cost of using force is prohibi tive, if one assumes from the out set that the cost of using force is infinite. But the proof would be invalid; it would be circular. A principle of strategy, which tells one what to do given that the rules must be followed, is hardly the vehicle by which to prove that the rules must be followed in the first place.

The Problem of Monopolies Consider, for example, the prob lem of monopolies in an anar chistic society. What is to prevent protection agencies from banding together to destroy the competi tion and form a monopoly over protective services? Is it because monopolies do not occur in a free society? But the reason monopo lies do not occur is that anyone is free to compete with large firms and, by underselling them, cut into their market; it is because the only determinant of success in a free market is the ability of the entrepreneur to persuade consum ers of the value of his goods, to give them the best choice. What would happen if force as well as persuasion could be used against consumers and competitors? Why would the large protection agen cies restrain themselves from driv ing out the competition by force? That is, after all, what happens in the nearest model we have to the anarchist system of protec tion agencies - the criminal un derworld. Clearly the anarchists are assuming what they have to prove: that the market would be free, that competition would exist unhindered, that coercion is not a means by which men would deal with each other.

Coercion is not, of course, the only means by which men do deal with each other; in most societies, gang warfare is an exceptiop. The anarchist may wish to argue, on the basis of this fact, that from a state of nature protection agencies would arise in peaceful competi tion, and the anarchist vision would be fulfilled. But this argu ment too is denied him. For wherever men, finding themselves without government, have not de scended to the level of gang war fare, they have done something else equally damaging to the anar chist hypothesis: they have formed new governments. Or, in the anar chist terminology, they have formed monopolistic "protection agen cies." But this is precisely what 248 THE FREEMAN April the anarchist says would not hap pen in an anarchistic situation. Anarchism lives on its opposition to government, but every govern ment that exists is a refutation of anarchism; for it belies the anar chists' prediction that if only we can send government away it will not come back.

Again, anarchists complain that governments are immoral because they"'initiate, or would initiate, the use of force against anyone form ing a rival "protection agency." Now it is false that this would be immoral: a government is justi fied in preventing any private power designed to exercise coer cion, because such a power is a threat to the rights of its citizens, even if the power is never actual ized. But the fact that govern ments 'would use force in this way is another refutation of anar chism; for such a use of force by one "protection agency" against another to keep its monopoly is precisely what the anarchist pre dicts would not occur. That such things happen, or would happen, is embarrassing to the anarchist because he allows no means for preventing them from happening. The anarchist is caught in a dilemma. Like his namesake of the nihilistic left, he rej ects the social institution through which men attempt, by positive action, to insure themselves of certain conditions nec essary for social existence; yet unlike the nihilist he believes that there are such conditions, and that a form of society in which they do not obtain is unacceptable.

Caught in this dilemma, he can only try to argue that these con ditions will come about by natural law, so that we need do nothing ourselves. But this argument, we have seen, is riddled with logical errors. It ignores the difference between coercion and economic goods on the market, a difference that undercuts the argument from the outset. It relies, for its argu ment that coercion would not in fact occur, on principles that as sume coercion cannot occur, which makes the argument circular. And since it rests on a prediction about what men would do, it is vulner able to the historical facts about what men have done. In the end, the anarchist cannot escape his dilemma; his dilemma is a contra diction. He is advocating a certain end, a society free of violence among men, while rejecting the only means of achieving that end. Thus anarchism is hardly even a political philosophy. It is, much rather, an attempt to escape the responsibility of providing one. It would, as its critics contend, be a disaster in practice; but that is because it is fantastic and inco herent in theory. ~ A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK JOHN CHAMBERLAIN Said the Crawling Peg To the Dirty Float, "We're two lost souls "In a leaky boat, "And down below there's a hole in the hold "That can't be plugged with Paper Gold."