Crisp Argument For Libertarianism

Libertarianism is the only morally justifiable political philosophy for anyone with a conscience normal enough to feel that murder, theft, and enslavement are wrong, and a mind consistent enough to apply that maxim to every man equally.

On Socialism

Socialism inevitably leads to destitution and famine in direct proportion to the thoroughness with which it is applied. This has been shown to be true historically, with or without Marxist ideology or 20th century totalitarianism. It has starved 17th century colonists in Virginia and Plymouth just as thoroughly as it did Russian peasants under Lenin. It has also been shown to be true theoretically, from Aristotle's elucidation of the free rider problem to Ludwig von Mises's insight regarding the impossibility of the efficient allocation of resources without prices set by a market for capital goods. Socialism, because it is a revolt against human nature, is a genocidal philosophy.

But that is just the consequentialist consideration. Socialism is evil on a deeper level as well. Socialism is evil to anyone with a conscience normal enough to feel in his heart that stealing is wrong and a mind consistent enough to apply that moral tenet to everyone equally.

On State Propagandists

One sub-set of the mandarin is the state propagandist.

The earliest surviving instance of state propaganda also happens to be the earliest well-documented piece of history: the inscribed cylinders which document the border struggles between the rival Sumerian city-states Lagash and Umma between ca. 2450 and 2300 BC.  The cylinders invoke the support of the gods for Lagash's cause.

This post to be extended...

The Throne/Altar Principle

The Throne/Altar Principle is a sub-set of the Magistrate/Mandarin Principle.  The latter principle states:

The state is a maleficent symbiosis of enslaving brigands (magistrates) and corrupt intellectuals (mandarins).  Throughout history magistrates have used mandarins to manufacture consent (through propaganda and indoctrination) and administer resources (technocracy).  In exchange the mandarins get to share with the magistrates the power, prestige, and pelf of statecraft.

The Throne/Altar Principle simply states that mandarins are often clerics (priests).  Clerics are distinguished from other mandarins in that they fulfill their role in manufacturing consent primarily via superstition.  The manner in which clerics "administer resources" as technocrats and "share with magistrates the power, prestige, and pelf of statecraft" is often distinct from other mandarins, in that they are tied up with the rituals and traditions of cult.

Stolen wealth administered by clerics will often be stored as temple finery which the clerics themselves enjoy and which can be used for trade in times of need.

The earliest recorded incident of this is in perhaps the "war of nerves" conducted by Enmerkar, ruler of the Sumerian city-state of Erech (Uruk), against Aratta, an Elamite city-state in what is now Iran.  Enmerkar demanded that the people of Aratta use its own mineral wealth and labor to construct shrines and temples at Erech, and proclaimed that this was commandment from Innana, an important goddess.

The God's Proxy Principle

States throughout history have covered their criminal acts with a veneer of false legitimacy by claiming to be divine agents.

The earliest recorded incident of this is in perhaps the "war of nerves" conducted by Enmerkar, ruler of the Sumerian city-state of Erech (Uruk), against Aratta, an Elamite city-state in what is now Iran.  Enmerkar demanded that the people of Aratta use its own mineral wealth and labor to construct shrines and temples at Erech, and proclaimed that this was commandment from Innana, an important goddess.

This post is to be extended...

The Magistrate/Mandarin Principle

This is the first of a series of posts called "Principles of Man".

I will continually return to each post in this series adding more evidence for its importance from history.

The state is a maleficent symbiosis of enslaving brigands (magistrates) and corrupt intellectuals (mandarins).  Throughout history magistrates have used mandarins to manufacture consent (through propaganda and indoctrination) and administer resources (technocracy).  In exchange the mandarins get to share with the magistrates the power, prestige, and pelf of statecraft.

Types of Mandarins

The Scribe

Especially before the advent of widespread literacy, the professional scribe was a highly important agent of the state.  Ancient scribes were perhaps the first technocrats.  Their chief role was to keep accurate records of resources, subjects, and the resources of subjects.

The first professional scribes arose in the place where writing itself first arose: ancient Sumer.  Moreover, the first Sumerian scribes worked for the state: that is, either in the palace or the temple.

To be continued...

A Mini-Manifesto of Liberty

In the following I outline, as succinctly as possible, my principles of libertarianism.

1. Natural Morality

I feel assault, plunder, and enslavement are wrong.  Implicit in this feeling is a belief in property rights.  I don't derive this feeling from some philosophical doctrine.  It's just part of me.  It arises from my heart, not my reason.  I believe most of humanity feels the way I do.  I believe most of humanity, in spite of widespread evidence to the contrary in today's society (which I will deal with below), deep down has an intrinsic respect for property rights.  Academics often talk about the importance of the tradition of property as a factor in "how the West got rich".  But I believe property is more than just a tradition; it's an instinct.

There is a burgeoning school of thought in evolutionary biology and the cognitive sciences (led by Marc Hauser and Steven Pinker) which contends that morality is not just cultural artifice, but that it is an intrinsic feature of the human mind which evolved over the countless millennia of humans living together.  There are some needs which are common to all man.  There is an overwhelming general need in the human species for self-restraint and fellow-feeling if it is to flourish.  It only makes sense that this overwhelming general need would mean that familial groups who tend to have certain highly-functional moral feelings would end up prospering and propagating their genes, while familial groups made up of individuals who were constantly killing and plundering each other would have died out.

Economic science teaches us that the most highly-functional moral feelings are those concerning ownership (both of one's bodily self and of external objects).  I believe it is no coincidence that we find in experience and in history that these same moral feelings concerning property are, of all moral feelings, the most timeless and universal.

I believe that this is why when we take up some unused thing and begin to use it, we automatically think of it as our "ours". We take reflexive affront when our person or our property is aggressed against by others. We feel involuntary outrage when we see the person or property of others aggressed against. And we spontaneously feel guilt when, or at least after, we aggress against the person or property of others.  Of course there are exceptions (as with those suffering from neurological disorders), but these facts are true for the overwhelming preponderance of humanity.

We don't need to be taught to feel revulsion toward murder, plunder, and enslavement; it has been stamped on our hearts by nature.  And implicit in our natural revulsion toward murder, plunder, and enslavement are property rights: imperatives from one's own conscience that says, "this is mine, that is thine".  I would go so far as to say that anyone who says they don't feel such proddings of the conscience are either impaired or lying.  And the fact that a great many people every day override that revulsion and go ahead and murder, plunder, and enslave anyway is owing to two causes.  First of all, frailty is just as much a part of human nature as morality is.  Moral urges are one kind of urge among many, and sometimes they lose the tug of war over human action.  The second cause is that institution that fosters and feeds upon human frailty: the state.

2. The Lifeboat Lie

As I said, I feel assault, plunder, and enslavement are wrong; I regard them as crimes.  I don't see any reason why an act that I would consider a crime if committed by any other man should not be considered a crime simply because it is committed by a man wearing a badge, dressed in fatigues, or bearing a license.  In other words, I make no exceptions for the state.

If morality is natural, then why do others make this exception?

As I've contended thus far, there is a moral code written in our hearts.  This inherent moral code is only shoved aside when we enter conditions of extremity (known as "lifeboat situations"), in which circumstances have forced the human community to devolve into a war of all against all. In those cases, the involuntary urge for survival overwhelms the involuntary urge for moral behavior, and we therefore cast aside our communal moral feelings for the sake of extreme short-term selfishness. In other words, we allow ourselves “necessary evils”.

The state has deceived the bulk of humanity into believing that society is inherently in constant extremity: a perpetual "lifeboat situation" in which a great many "necessary evils" must be committed by the state, else the "lifeboat" of society will keel over and everybody will drown. This is a lie. Society does not require for its survival, or even for its flowering, that certain men be above natural morality. The acts of murder, plunder, and enslavement committed by the state are not necessary evils.  They're just plain evils; just as much as if you or I committed them as private individuals.

3. The Sword and The Lie

To understand how the "Lifeboat Lie" can have become so widely accepted in spite of our natural morality, one must understand the nature of the state, and nobody understood the nature of the state more than Murray N. Rothbard.  In The Ethics of Liberty Rothbard wrote:

Ideology has always been vital to the continued existence of the State, as attested by the systematic use of ideology since the ancient Oriental empires. The specific content of the ideology has, of course, changed over time, in accordance with changing conditions and cultures. In the Oriental despotisms, the Emperor was often held by the Church to be himself divine; in our more secular age, the argument runs more to “the public good” and the “general welfare.” But the purpose is always the same: to convince the public that what the State does is not, as one might think, crime on a gigantic scale, but something necessary and vital that must be supported and obeyed. The reason that ideology is so vital to the State is that it always rests, in essence, on the support of the majority of the public. This support obtains whether the State is a “democracy,” a dictatorship, or an absolute monarchy. For the support rests in the willingness of the majority (not, to repeat, of every individual) to go along with the system: to pay the taxes, to go without much complaint to fight the State’s wars, to obey the State’s rules and decrees. This support need not be active enthusiasm to be effective; it can just as well be passive resignation. But support there must be. For if the bulk of the public were really convinced of the illegitimacy of the State, if it were convinced that the State is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large, then the State would soon collapse to take on no more status or breadth of existence than another Mafia gang. Hence the necessity of the State’s employment of ideologists; and hence the necessity of the State’s age-old alliance with the Court Intellectuals who weave the apologia for State rule. [...]

Particularly important in the modern world—now that an Established Church is often no longer feasible—is for the State to assume control over education, and thereby to mould the minds of its subjects. In addition to influencing the universities through all manner of financial subventions, and through state-owned universities directly, the State controls education on the lower levels through the universal institutions of the public school, through certification requirements for private schools, and through compulsory attendance laws. Add to this a virtually total control over radio and television—either through outright State ownership, as in most countries—or, as in the United States, by the nationalization of the airwaves, and by the power of a federal commission to license the right of stations to use those frequencies and channels.

Thus, the State, by its very nature, must violate the generally accepted moral laws to which most people adhere. Most people are agreed on the injustice and criminality of murder and theft. The customs, rules, and laws of all societies condemn these actions. The State, then, is always in a vulnerable position, despite its seeming age-old might. What particularly needs to be done is to enlighten the public on the State’s true nature, so that they can see that the State habitually violates the generally accepted injunctions against robbery and murder, that the State is the necessary violator of the commonly accepted moral and criminal law.

We have seen clearly why the State needs the intellectuals; but why do the intellectuals need the State? Put simply, it is because intellectuals, whose services are often not very intensively desired by the mass of consumers, can find a more secure “market” for their abilities in the arms of the State. The State can provide them with a power, status, and wealth which they often cannot obtain in voluntary exchange. For centuries, many (though, of course, not all) intellectuals have sought the goal of Power, the realization of the Platonic ideal of the “philosopher-king.” Consider, for example, the cry from the heart by the distinguished Marxist scholar, Professor Needham, in protest against the acidulous critique by Karl Wittfogel of the alliance of State-and-intellectuals in Oriental despotisms: “The civilization which Professor Wittfogel is so bitterly attacking was one which could make poets and scholars into officials.” Needham adds that “the successive [Chinese] emperors were served in all ages by a great company of profoundly humane and disinterested scholars.” Presumably, for Professor Needham, this is enough to justify the grinding despotisms of the ancient Orient.

There will always be thuggery: assault, plunder, and enslavement.  But mankind has natural safeguards to defend against thuggery: including the ability to recognize justice, and the ability to join together with other decent people to implement justice.

There will always be deceit: slander, fraud, and indoctrination.  But mankind has natural safeguards to defend against deceit as well: reason, skepticism, and the senses.

However, our defenses have been overwhelmed by a devastatingly effective partnership between thuggery and deceit.  As Rothbard explained, the state is a maleficent symbiosis of violent criminals and propagandizing intellectuals.  I call these partners in crime the Sword and the Lie. The Lie fosters the Sword through twisted sophistries which establish a false legitimacy and engineered consent to disarm our natural safeguards against thuggery. The Sword fosters the Lie through compulsory indoctrination (state religions and public schools) and through using its ill-gotten gains to corrupt the persuasive classes (state-beholden media and academia), all of which disarms our natural safeguards against deceit.

The Sword needs the Lie.  The ruled always outnumber the rulers, so a reign predicated on bald criminality (like a protection racket) would quickly be overthrown. To maintain its power, a regime must transmute murder into justice, tribute into taxation, and slavery into citizenship in the minds of its subjects. To do that, it needs intellectuals.

The Lie needs the Sword. Elaborate scams based on lies and manipulations (like cults) are difficult to maintain. Eventually some people begin to see through the lies and speak out. To keep its hold on its flock, an elite must be able to silence or coerce dissenters. To do that, it needs thugs.

The state has us in bonds, but also under a spell. The former could not hold us without the latter. In order to break our bonds, we must first break the spell.

How do we break the spell?  Libertarian intellectualism.

4. The Role of the Libertarian Intellectual

Now, if it weren’t for state propaganda, there would be no need for libertarian intellectualism, because again, morals relating to property are written on our hearts.  A man doesn’t need to understand the politics of war to know that murder is wrong; neither need he understand how markets work to know that stealing is wrong.  Again, the problem is that the state, through its false economics and false political philosophy, has convinced mankind that the world is in a constant state of extremity, such that, without some men being given the power to murder, steal, and enslave with impunity, civilization will descend into chaos. False theory can only be fought effectively with true theory. The role of a libertarian intellectual therefore is not to weave intricate theories to justify justice itself (there is no need for that); rather it is to unweave the tangled fabric of state lies. That is why we need economics and political philosophy: to show exactly how the state’s purported necessary evils aren't actually necessary, and thereby reveal to people their inner libertarian.  Were the "Lifeboat Lie" to be exposed, I strongly believe the inherent decency of man would then kick in (just as did with me once Austrian economics taught me about the natural workings of a free society).  Good men would no longer tolerate (or indulge in) "necessary evils", and evil men would have nowhere to run.

Mini-Manifestos

Murray Rothbard wrote the greatest libertarian manifesto ever: For a New Liberty.  Ron Paul wrote what might be the second greatest: Revolution: A Manifesto.  Not everyone has what it takes to write a great book like these two giants did.  But I think every libertarian could benefit from writing his or her own Mini-Manifesto of Liberty.  Doing so can not only inspire others, but can provide focus and clarity in helping the writer to understand what he or she is striving for and why.  I invite anyone reading this to write your own "Mini-Manifesto of Liberty" in a text file and post it here.

Vain Intellectuals and Wise Workers

All professions have a tendency toward self-importance. So it should be no surprise that historians have a distinct bias towards eras in which their own forerunners (ancient chroniclers and historians) were existent and employed. Thus, societies without chroniclers are termed “dark ages”. Of course these ages are dark, as in “obscure”, since we necessarily know little about them. But too often, this “darkness” is also given a decidedly judgmental connotation. To many historians, an absence of their own kind must signal social despair and economic desolation. However great the recent dividends of literacy, however, for most of history, literacy has actually been largely a tool for elite domination. It was the literate classes who lorded it over the non-literate classes, using the written language as a class barrier and a tool for greater efficiency in their criminal statecraft.

Another bias of historians is one which they share with all “academics”: one favoring the non-practical studies over the practical. Thus, mankind only really achieved “glory” in the world of thought when they began to contemplate the stars as did the ancient Babylonians or tried to discover laws of nature as did the ancient Greeks. Never mind that the Babylonian priest monitoring constellations did so fed by grain forcefully extracted from a hard-laboring serf. And never mind that the fruits of the astronomer’s labor never resulted in any actual increased prosperity for ancient man. The careful thinking and experimentation of the working man who improved his tools and techniques, thereby increasing his prosperity, is the realm of “science” which did, by far, the most good for mankind; i.e. the woman who figured out a better way of stiching a grain pouch, or the man who judged, based on profit-loss calculations, what was the best price for his wares.

According to these biases, the oppressive regimes of Chinese emperors are glorified because glorious philosophers staffed their mandarinates. The economic stagnation of the Roman Empire is seen as a glorious time of order when the literate classes held their rightful place at the top of the heap. And the amazing industrial revolution of the medieval era which resulted in a tremendous increase in the standard of living, is falsely seen as a dark time of superstition and squalor, since the only deep thinkers of the age (priests and monks) were humiliatingly cloistered.

The cogitations of the learned classes throughout history have been largely vain or pernicious. It is the hard-thinking of the common man trying to improve things for himself and his family (which, in aggregate ends up improving things for everybody) that should be honored.

Cradle of the State

The state was likely born out of a cult. The former would not have been supportable with the latter. Further, it is unlikely that the latter would last long without evolving into the former. Thus it is reasonable to believe that both would have originated in the same place. In my post “Between the rivers, before the state“, I argued that archaeology shows that mankind in the near east lived in a prosperous, agricultural, anarchic society, until a new culture, dominated by priest-kings, arose and spread from the south. Where did this “Ubaid” culture start and how? It seems likely that that culture, and the very ideas of cult and state first arose in Eridu. My evidence for this claim is as follows.

Evidence from Literature 
The “Eridu Genesis”, found in a tablet dating from the 18th century BC, calls Eridu “firstling of the cities”. And the Sumerian king list states:

After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridug. In Eridug, Alulim became king

It is uncontroversial that the first “city-states” arose in Sumer. And here we find a Sumerian text pointing to Eridu as the first Sumerian city-state. And here, in the words “kingship descended from heaven” we have an indication of false legitimacy fostered by religion being used to establish a worldly power.

Alulim is considered the first king of Eridu. But there is a yet more important figure in the city’s foundation story: the mysterious character of Adapa. According to ancient tablets, the legendary figure of Adapa was:

the wise man of Eridu, Ea had created him as chief among men, A wise man whose command none should oppose, The prudent, the most wise among the Anunnaki was he, Blameless, of clean hands, anointed, observer of the divine statutes

Each city in Mesopotamia had its chief deity. The city’s temple for that god was considered to be its home, and the priests of that temple were its servants. Eridu, throughout its history, was considered by all of Mesopotamia to be the home of Enki (known to the Semites as Ea) the god of fresh waters and fertile land. According to the above passage, the first god of the firstling of cities chose Adapa as his chief priest. 

Furthermore, Adapa is often associated with the mythic character Oannes, who according to the later Babylonian scholar Berossus:

taught (the people of Mesopotamia) to build towers and temples; and to establish laws;

If this myth has any basis in cultural memory, then perhaps Adapa was a real person who introduced a cult to the area now known as Eridu. As the new cult’s chief priest, it is easy to imagine this ancient Jim Jones amassing power. 

Evidence from Archaeology Eridu is the oldest Sumerian city known to archaeologists. And it is the first place in which evidence of the “Ubaid” culture is found. In fact, the early phase of the Ubaid period is known as “Eridu”.

The archaelogical site of Eridu reveals that a series of successively larger temples was built on the same spot, starting with a simple, tiny one-room building, and ending with a vast sprawling proto-ziqqurat.¹ This is the first instance in the archaeological record in which any kind of heavy centralization of power is evidenced by a few buildings being dramatically larger than the rest. And one can see that centralization of power growing as each successive temple is built with ever greater opulence, while the surrounding buildings stay humble.

The temples of Eridu are numbered such that the most recently built temple is numbered 1, and older temples are successively numbered higher.

Temple 17, the earliest discovered temple on the site (and most probably in the world), is a small square building (no more than 4 meters square) with a simple, small square pedestal inside. This is possibly the site of the first ever “offerings” to Enki (or to any god for that matter), with ovens outside for baking the offerings.

Temple 16 is a larger reconstruction of 17, with two pedestals, one surrounded by ash. The construction is of higher quality than preceding temples, with plaster bricks. Pottery was found outside, as well as an oven.

By the time we reach Temple 11, Enki’s home has grown to be 15 meters long. And now it is raised on a platform (to suitably represent the superiority of the god and his servants), with a 1 meter ramp leading up from a lower level (there are signs that the platform was extended at some point). It has a large central chamber, a sanctuary conjoined with an offering room, and a private room for the priest(s).

Temple 10 has a yet larger podium, and the platform is extended by a further 8 meters.

Temple 9 has thicker walls, a large door before the altar, and a bench (perhaps for votive statues). This arrangement is very similar to level 13 of the archaeological site, Gawra.

Temple 8 is greatly enlarged (21 x 12 m). It has even thicker walls, false doorways behind the altar, and the remains of fish offerings. This is particularly interesting as Berossus depicts Oannes as wearing a mantle which looked like the head of a fish.

Temple 7 has a special priests-only entrance to the altar-end of the sanctuary.

Temple 6 also has a bench for votive statues.

At some point, a separate palace is constructed one kilometer north of the temple site. This palace site, the earliest known in the world, also undergoes a series of upgrades through the ages. However, most of the palace levels were not archaeologically recoverable. Level 2 is the most complete. It bears resemblances to palaces in the city-state and later holy site of Kish. It is distinguished from temples in the absence of altars and the presence of gates, chambers, courtyards, guard’s rooms, and living quarters.

Perhaps this palace, and palaces in general, developed as a residence for top priests, who evolved into kings. Alternately, perhaps the priests gave some local uneducated ruffian command of the army, so they would not themselves need to get in harms way. This “general” acquired a power-base of allegiance of his own among the soldiers, and evolved into a king, then demanding his own lavish quarters.

Did Adapa come into Eridu, convince a small fishing village that he had the ear of the god Enki, translate that influence into great wealth for himself and his temple, pass on his position to his sons, and thus create the first temple-state? We will never know with certainty exactly what happened. But what hardly admits of doubt is that

1. according to both literary and archaeological evidence, Eridu really was the “firstling of cities”,
2. Eridu is the earliest archaeological instance of acute centralization of power and pelf (as indicated by its buildings),
3. Eridu’s centralization of power and pelf fell upon the first great cult (as indicated by the fact that the earliest great buildings were also the earliest great temples),
4. in this firstling of cities, the cult antedated the secular state (since its temples andedated the palaces), and
5. the first great cult gave rise to the first ever secular state (it is too much of a coincidence that the first great temples arose in the same exact place as the first palaces).

Eridu’s place on the King’s List also indicates that it was something of an empire. The King’s List is known to have only included kings whose cities reigned over (or were at least hegemonic over) the entire region of “Sumer-and-Akkad”. This jibes perfectly with the fact that the Ubaid culture which first arose in Eridu was later found throughout the region. And given how, throughout history, the most centralized nation-states have also been the most war-thirsty, it seems very likely that the priest-kings of Eridu would not be satisfied with completely subjugating only the local population. And also seems very likely that an all-powerful central cult-state, with the ability to dragoon its young men into war, would be able to put under the yoke village after peace-loving village as it marched up the Euphrates.

People tend to implicitly assume that the state has always been with us, and thus it is somehow a natural fact of life. This assumption is greatly assisted by the fact that, even though agriculture pre-dates the state, the state predates writing and written history. Writing itself played a key role in ratcheting up the power of the state. I will discuss that role in my next post.

¹ Reconstruction of Eridu, http://babel.massart.edu/~tkelley/v5.0/eridu/. This is an excellent HTML model of the archaeological site. I highly recommend taking this stratigraphic “tour” of Eridu. For more information see this excerpt from the Cambridge Ancient History (on Google Books).

The Racket and the Cult

As I argued in my post The Sword and the Lie, the state is a symbiosis of violent criminals (the sword) and propagandizing intellectuals (the lie).

The sword needs the lie. Rulers always outnumber the ruled, so a reign predicated on bald criminality (like a protection racket) would shortly be overthrown. To maintain its power, a regime must transmute murder into justice, tribute into taxation, and slavery into citizenship in the minds of its subjects. To do that, it needs intellectuals.

The lie needs the sword. Elaborate scams based on lies and manipulations (like cults) are difficult to maintain. Eventually some people begin to see through the lies and speak out. To keep its hold on its flock, an elite must be able to silence or coerce dissenters. To do that, it needs thugs.

So which came first in the original state, the racket or the cult? And how did the first-comer bring its partner into the scheme?

Let us consider the sword preceding the lie. Thomas Paine speculated that:

“It could have been no difficult thing in the early and solitary ages of the world, while the chief employment of men was that of attending flocks and herds, for a banditti of ruffians to overrun a country, and lay it under contribution. Their power being thus established, the chief of the band contrived to lose the name of robber in that of monarch; and hence the origin of monarchy and kings.”¹

But how exactly could the bandit chief have established such false legitimacy? The easiest thing to do what have been to brainwash the children. While the banditti’s first “subjects” would never forget the criminal basis of their subjugation, the malleable minds of their children could be molded to accept just about anything. And as keeping brains sufficiently washed became a bigger part of the enterprise, some of the bandits may have come to specialize in it. Thus, through division of labor, might the sword have begotten the lie.

How, then, might the lie have given rise to the sword? That question is easier to answer, because we’ve seen this happen in our own age. After the cult leader Jim Jones had acquired enough influence over his flock and managed to lead it into isolation from the rest of the world, it was quite easy for him to arm his most loyal supporters and thus gain coercive control over the rest. One can imagine a similar development happening in antiquity.

In fact, as I will argue in my next post, I believe just such a development was indeed the origin of the very first state in the world.

---

¹ Thomas Paine, excerpted from Liberty and the Great Libertarians, edited by Charles T. Sprading

 

Between the Rivers, Before the State

It has been argued that man has only risen from the depths of squalor upon becoming “civilized”, that is, upon coalescing into a civitas, or state. Thus mainstream history textbooks include the origination of government as a crucial step in the “march of progress.”Great prosperity is the fruit of society, not the state. And society antedates the state. 

Civilization first arose in Mesopotamia, the “land between the rivers”.   However, many societal advancements associated with “civilization” antedated the state in that region.  Paleolithic families commerced with people as far away as Anatolia and Palestine: many millenia before the rise of the Sumerian city-states.  Village life arose in Mesolithic times.  And the Neolithic agricultural revolution and introduction of pottery got underway quite nicely under stone age anarchy.

Three successive (though overlapping) proto-historical cultures arose in northern Mesopotamia: the Hassuna, Samarra, and Halaf cultures.  All three made great strides in art, trade, and the technologies of agriculture, building, implements, pottery, and even irrigation.  And not one of them showed any signs of having any central government.  There were signs of religion on a household level; but there were no temples, and no signs of an official cult.The Hassuna culture developed stamp seals, an important development in private property and trade, as well as a precursor to the written language.  The Samarra culture invented irrigation with which they produced amazingly abundant harvests, as evidenced by the remains of capacious granaries.  The Halaf culture even had cobbled streets and specialized centers which mass produced a distinctive pottery (which has been called by the French antiquarian Georges Roux, “the most beautiful ever used in Mesopotamia”¹) for peaceful exchange abroad. Anarchic Mesopotamian humanity was accomplishing wondrous things for itself.

Then something happened.   Several Halafian towns were for some reason depopulated.  And their exquisite pottery was replaced by a cruder style: an archaeological sign of cultural displacement.   A very different people, the Ubaid culture, had come from the south and supplanted the Halafians.  The Ubaid culture had shrines, altars, offering tables, and enormous temples: sure signs of a priestly elite.  And their temples consistently grew in size and grandeur as the ages went by: a sure sign of consolidating priestly power.   It is highly likely that the people of this culture are the famous Sumerians themselves in their proto-historical form.   If so, then the cult which originated in the Ubaid temples is the very tradition which evolved into the monstrous temple-states of Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, and Assyria.  The north Mesopotamian tradition of freedom that lasted for a millenium and a half was replaced by the systemic deceit and coercion of the temple and the state, which at this early stage, were one and the same.

¹ Ancient Iraq by Georges Roux

Vain Intellectuals and Wise Workers

All professions have a tendency toward self-importance. So it should be no surprise that historians have a distinct bias towards eras in which their own forerunners (ancient chroniclers and historians) were existent and employed. Thus, societies without chroniclers are termed “dark ages”. Of course these ages are dark, as in “obscure”, since we necessarily know little about them. But too often, this “darkness” is also given a decidedly judgmental connotation. To many historians, an absence of their own kind must signal social despair and economic desolation. However great the recent dividends of literacy, however, for most of history, literacy has actually been largely a tool for elite domination. It was the literate classes who lorded it over the non-literate classes, using the written language as a class barrier and a tool for greater efficiency in their criminal statecraft.

Another bias of historians is one which they share with all “academics”: one favoring the non-practical studies over the practical. Thus, mankind only really achieved “glory” in the world of thought when they began to contemplate the stars as did the ancient Babylonians or tried to discover laws of nature as did the ancient Greeks. Never mind that the Babylonian priest monitoring constellations did so fed by grain forcefully extracted from a hard-laboring serf. And never mind that the fruits of the astronomer’s labor never resulted in any actual increased prosperity for ancient man. The careful thinking and experimentation of the working man who improved his tools and techniques, thereby increasing his prosperity, is the realm of “science” which did, by far, the most good for mankind; i.e. the woman who figured out a better way of stiching a grain pouch, or the man who judged, based on profit-loss calculations, what was the best price for his wares.

According to these biases, the oppressive regimes of Chinese emperors are glorified because glorious philosophers staffed their mandarinates. The economic stagnation of the Roman Empire is seen as a glorious time of order when the literate classes held their rightful place at the top of the heap. And the amazing industrial revolution of the medieval era which resulted in a tremendous increase in the standard of living, is falsely seen as a dark time of superstition and squalor, since the only deep thinkers of the age (priests and monks) were humiliatingly cloistered.

The cogitations of the learned classes throughout history have been largely vain or pernicious. It is the hard-thinking of the common man trying to improve things for himself and his family (which, in aggregate ends up improving things for everybody) that should be honored.

The State as Inimical to Man

The state is inherently inimical to man.  Human beings are characterized by the fact that they act. As Ludwig von Mises pointed out, we are just as much homo agens as homo sapiens. To act is to behave with purpose: that is, to deliberate upon and choose between means to achieve our ends. That part of us which deliberates is called our reason. That part of us which chooses is called our will.

Dead things don’t reason, choose, or act. They just react. They are mindless assemblages of particles which only respond slavishly to the impulses given them.

Dumb animals don’t reason, choose, or act. They just behave. They are non-rational expressions of genes which only serve reflexively the end of propagating those genes. 

Humans and any other animals who have evolved reason are also assemblages of particles; and we are also expressions of genes. But crowning all of this, we also have reason, will, and action. 

The raison d’être of the state is to crush action by supplanting individual ends with its own, to crush the will by supplanting individual choice with its own, and to crush reason by supplanting individual thought with its own. The necessary corollary to the rise of the state is the fall of humanity: for man to effectively devolve into dumb animals (livestock) and finally into dead machines (tools). Since the state is all about destroying all that is human, it is inherently anti-human. For humans, therefore, the state is inherently evil.

The Racket and the Cult

As I argued in my post The Sword and the Lie, the state is a symbiosis of violent criminals (the sword) and propagandizing intellectuals (the lie).

The sword needs the lie. Rulers always outnumber the ruled, so a reign predicated on bald criminality (like a protection racket) would shortly be overthrown. To maintain its power, a regime must transmute murder into justice, tribute into taxation, and slavery into citizenship in the minds of its subjects. To do that, it needs intellectuals.

The lie needs the sword. Elaborate scams based on lies and manipulations (like cults) are difficult to maintain. Eventually some people begin to see through the lies and speak out. To keep its hold on its flock, an elite must be able to silence or coerce dissenters. To do that, it needs thugs.

So which came first in the original state, the racket or the cult? And how did the first-comer bring its partner into the scheme?

Let us consider the sword preceding the lie. Thomas Paine speculated that:

“It could have been no difficult thing in the early and solitary ages of the world, while the chief employment of men was that of attending flocks and herds, for a banditti of ruffians to overrun a country, and lay it under contribution. Their power being thus established, the chief of the band contrived to lose the name of robber in that of monarch; and hence the origin of monarchy and kings.”¹

But how exactly could the bandit chief have established such false legitimacy? The easiest thing to do what have been to brainwash the children. While the banditti’s first “subjects” would never forget the criminal basis of their subjugation, the malleable minds of their children could be molded to accept just about anything. And as keeping brains sufficiently washed became a bigger part of the enterprise, some of the bandits may have come to specialize in it. Thus, through division of labor, might the sword have begotten the lie.

How, then, might the lie have given rise to the sword? That question is easier to answer, because we’ve seen this happen in our own age. After the cult leader Jim Jones had acquired enough influence over his flock and managed to lead it into isolation from the rest of the world, it was quite easy for him to arm his most loyal supporters and thus gain coercive control over the rest. One can imagine a similar development happening in antiquity.

In fact, as I will argue in my next post, I believe just such a development was indeed the origin of the very first state in the world.

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¹ Thomas Paine, excerpted from Liberty and the Great Libertarians, edited by Charles T. Sprading

 

Brigands as Hunters of Men; Magistrates as Farmers

Hunting and livestock farming are both ways of coercively exploiting animals. The fundamental difference is that farming is stationary and involves the "breaking in" of the animal.

Aristotle thought of brigands as basically hunters.

Others support themselves by hunting, which is of different kinds. Some, for example, are brigands¹

This makes perfect sense. And if brigands are hunters, then statesmen are farmers.
Watch the video below by Stefan Molyneux to see how:

1. Nation-states are farms
2. Citizens are livestock
3. Public schools are training pens
4. States allow certain freedoms only because of the greater productivity of "free-range livestock"

It is a crime against natural justice that we be treated as livestock. As Thomas Jefferson said,

"the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately."

¹ Aristotle, Politics, Book 1

The Sword and the Lie

 

I normally wouldn’t quote another work at such length, but the following seven paragraphs are devastatingly true and important, and need to be disseminated as widely as possible. I couldn’t summarize or abbreviate it without losing something crucial. I can only hope to encapsulate its lesson, as I try to in my own contribution after the quote.

From The Ethics of Liberty, Chapter 22, by Murray N. Rothbard:

Ideology has always been vital to the continued existence of the State, as attested by the systematic use of ideology since the ancient Oriental empires. The specific content of the ideology has, of course, changed over time, in accordance with changing conditions and cultures. In the Oriental despotisms, the Emperor was often held by the Church to be himself divine; in our more secular age, the argument runs more to “the public good” and the “general welfare.” But the purpose is always the same: to convince the public that what the State does is not, as one might think, crime on a gigantic scale, but something necessary and vital that must be supported and obeyed. The reason that ideology is so vital to the State is that it always rests, in essence, on the support of the majority of the public. This support obtains whether the State is a “democracy,” a dictatorship, or an absolute monarchy. For the support rests in the willingness of the majority (not, to repeat, of every individual) to go along with the system: to pay the taxes, to go without much complaint to fight the State’s wars, to obey the State’s rules and decrees. This support need not be active enthusiasm to be effective; it can just as well be passive resignation. But support there must be. For if the bulk of the public were really convinced of the illegitimacy of the State, if it were convinced that the State is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large, then the State would soon collapse to take on no more status or breadth of existence than another Mafia gang. Hence the necessity of the State’s employment of ideologists; and hence the necessity of the State’s age-old alliance with the Court Intellectuals who weave the apologia for State rule.

The first modern political theorist who saw that all States rest on majority opinion was the sixteenth-century libertarian French writer, Etienne de la Boetie. In his Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, de la Boetie saw that the tyrannical State is always a minority of the population, and that therefore its continued despotic rule must rest on its legitimacy in the eyes of the exploited majority, on what would later come to be called “the engineering of consent.” Two hundred years later, David Hume—though scarcely a libertarian—set forth a similar analysis. The counter-argument that, with modern weapons, a minority force can permanently cow a hostile majority ignores the fact that these weapons can be held by the majority and that the armed force of the minority can mutiny or defect to the side of the populace. Hence, the permanent need for persuasive ideology has always led the State to bring into its rubric the nation’s opinion-moulding intellectuals. In former days, the intellectuals were invariably the priests, and hence, as we have pointed out, the age-old alliance between Church-and-State, Throne-and-Altar. Nowadays, “scientific” and “value-free” economists and “national security managers,” among others, perform a similar ideological function in behalf of State power.

Particularly important in the modern world—now that an Established Church is often no longer feasible—is for the State to assume control over education, and thereby to mould the minds of its subjects. In addition to influencing the universities through all manner of financial subventions, and through state-owned universities directly, the State controls education on the lower levels through the universal institutions of the public school, through certification requirements for private schools, and through compulsory attendance laws. Add to this a virtually total control over radio and television—either through outright State ownership, as in most countries—or, as in the United States, by the nationalization of the airwaves, and by the power of a federal commission to license the right of stations to use those frequencies and channels.

Thus, the State, by its very nature, must violate the generally accepted moral laws to which most people adhere. Most people are agreed on the injustice and criminality of murder and theft. The customs, rules, and laws of all societies condemn these actions. The State, then, is always in a vulnerable position, despite its seeming age-old might. What particularly needs to be done is to enlighten the public on the State’s true nature, so that they can see that the State habitually violates the generally accepted injunctions against robbery and murder, that the State is the necessary violator of the commonly accepted moral and criminal law.

We have seen clearly why the State needs the intellectuals; but why do the intellectuals need the State? Put simply, it is because intellectuals, whose services are often not very intensively desired by the mass of consumers, can find a more secure “market” for their abilities in the arms of the State. The State can provide them with a power, status, and wealth which they often cannot obtain in voluntary exchange. For centuries, many (though, of course, not all) intellectuals have sought the goal of Power, the realization of the Platonic ideal of the “philosopher-king.” Consider, for example, the cry from the heart by the distinguished Marxist scholar, Professor Needham, in protest against the acidulous critique by Karl Wittfogel of the alliance of State-and-intellectuals in Oriental despotisms: “The civilization which Professor Wittfogel is so bitterly attacking was one which could make poets and scholars into officials.” Needham adds that “the successive [Chinese] emperors were served in all ages by a great company of profoundly humane and disinterested scholars.” Presumably, for Professor Needham, this is enough to justify the grinding despotisms of the ancient Orient.

But we need not go back as far as the ancient Orient or even as far as the proclaimed goal of the professors at the University of Berlin, in the nineteenth century, to form themselves into “the intellectual bodyguard of the House of Hohenzollern.” In contemporary America, we have the eminent political scientist, Professor Richard Neustadt, hailing the President as the “sole crownlike symbol of the Union.” We have national security manager Townsend Hoopes writing that “under our system the people can look only to the President to define the nature of our foreign policy problem and the national programs and sacrifices required to meet it with effectiveness.” And, in response, we have Richard Nixon, on the eve of his election as President, defining his role as follows: “He [the President] must articulate the nation’s values, define its goals and marshall its will.” Nixon’s conception of his role is hauntingly similar to the scholar Ernst Huber’s articulation, in the Germany of the 1930s, of the Constitutional Law of the Greater German Reich. Huber wrote that the head of State “sets up the great ends which are to be attained and draws up the plans for the utilization of all national powers in the achievement of the common goals . . . he gives the national life its true purpose and value.”

Thus, the State is a coercive criminal organization that subsists by a regularized large-scale system of taxation-theft, and which gets away with it by engineering the support of the majority (not, again, of everyone) through securing an alliance with a group of opinion-moulding intellectuals whom it rewards with a share in its power and pelf.

There will always be crime: assault, plunder, and enslavement. We will always have “the Sword”. But mankind has natural safeguards to defend against crime: including the ability to recognize justice, and the ability to strike back against criminals.

There will always be deceit: slander, fraud, and supersition. We will always have “the Lie”. But mankind has natural safeguards to defend against deceit as well: reason, skepticism, and the senses.

The state is a pernicious partnership of the Sword and the Lie. The Lie fosters the Sword through twisted sophistries which establish a false legitimacy and engineered consent to disarm our natural safeguards against criminality. The Sword fosters the Lie through compulsory indoctrination (state religions and public schools) and through using its ill-gotten gains to corrupt the persuasive classes (state-beholden media and academia), all of which disarms our natural safeguards against deceit.

The state has us in bonds, but also under a spell. The former could not hold us without the latter. In order to break our bonds, we must first break the spell.

 

Aristotle on the State as Association

Aristotle argued that the state is the form of society with the highest purpose:

“Every state is an association of some kind, and every association is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all associations aim at some good, the state or political association, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.” ¹

But what would make the state the highest association: that it “embraces all the rest”? It does not. If two traders, one from Aristotle’s adopted city of Athens, and one from Athens’ mortal enemy Persia, contrive to evade political restrictions and trade with each other, then they are associating with each other. They have an association: one which transcends the bonds imposed by the brutish quarrels between their two states. Of course even broader associations than that existed, even in the ancient world. Let us say the Persian trader exchanged some gold for spices from an Indian trader. Then the Persian trades those spices for some pottery with the Greek trader. This is the kind of trade that happened countless times over in antiquity. And therein we have a super-national association that transcends a city-state, a kingdom, and an empire: and one which stretches from the Aegean Sea to the Indus Valley. It is the society that manifests out of peaceful world trade, and not the state, which “embraces all the rest”.

Furthermore, I would argue that a state is not even an association at all. Would you call the relation between a bandit and his victim an “association”? If not, then neither should you so term the relation between a ruling caste and its subject population.

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¹ Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, Part 1

 

The Relative Virtues of the Common Criminal

The only difference between the taxing state and a robber is that the former, through its apologists (ancient priests, modern experts, etc) makes you think its for your own good, and subjects you to a greater variety of injustice. In fact, the comparison makes the profession of robbery look downright benign. Lysander Spooner said it best…

The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful. The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes men’s money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.¹

¹Lysander Spooner, No Treason No. 6, The Constitution of No Authority, part 3

 

The Role of the Libertarian Intellectual

On the Mises Institute boards, somebody asked the question, “Who is the founding father of libertarianism?” Board members responded with an nice mix of usual suspects and surprising ones. My first thought was John Locke. But then I reconsidered, and wrote (basically) the following:

John Locke’s property theory was absolutely essential for libertarianism as an intellectual stance. But, it doesn’t take philosophy to recognize natural property rights on a gut level. Therefore, I nominate the very first human. Such an individual, who, long before the false legitimacy of state theft and murder, knew all he needed to know about libertarianism.

Property-based libertarianism is written in our nature. It’s a moral axiom that is present in the heart of any man who isn’t mixed up by the sophistries of the state. A man doesn’t need to understand the politics of war to know that murder is wrong; neither need he understand how markets work to know that stealing is wrong. If it weren’t for state propaganda, there would be no need for libertarian intellectualism. Unfortunately the state, through its false economics and false political philosophy, has convinced mankind that the world is in a constant state of extremity, such that, without some men being given the power to murder, steal, and enslave with impunity, civilization will descend into chaos. False theory can only be fought effectively with true theory. The role of a libertarian intellectual therefore is not to weave intricate theories to justify justice itself (there is no need for that); rather it is to UNWEAVE the tangled fabric of state lies. That is why we need economics and political philosophy: to show exactly how the state’s purported necessary evils are simply evils, and thereby reveal to people their inner libertarian.

 

The Mugging Medium

One in a litany of shameful episodes surrounding the Hurrican Katrina disaster was Congressmen balking at giving up their pork projects to fund rebuilding in New Orleans (a notable exception was minority leader Nancy Pelosi from California). As generous as Americans generally feel toward the victims of Katrina, most voters at the ballot box would fail to make the connection between their local projects and the disaster. Congress knows this is true, and that they would sooner be punished for their failure to bring home the bacon than rewarded for any principle they display. Alaskans lobby for their bridge to nowhere, farm-belters lobby for their agriculture subsidies... every region has its own pet transportation project and pet industry. And their representatives shell out the pork to buy their votes. But it's not just Congress. The president basically bought the votes of the elderly with his woefully irresponsible Medicare law. It all brings me to the conclusion that for all the rhetoric about its power to protect and advance society, government has become primarily a medium through which otherwise decent citizens indirectly mug each other. It's an enabler for mugging. Middle-class Granny would never actually reach into the pocket of a Katrina victim for money to pay for her pills. That would be unseemly. But via the indirect means of voting, taxation, and benefit distribution, such a robbery is made to seem a civilized transaction.