Against Authority |
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What Can I Do?
The inevitable question in response to advocacy for political change is: What can I do? Our analysis of the institution of state gives some hints about what may or may not work. In particular, our elitist model of political power - that the ruling elite make the decisions within the state apparatus - indicates that working "within the system" will not work. We recommend not voting at all, since voting seems to condone the state and its immoral actions. Similarly, begging the politicians through signing petitions is, if not futile, at the very least counterproductive. We should be trying to destroy the state's mystique of legitimacy, not enhance it.
As I see it, there are two major ways an individual can strive for change: 1) delegitimize the state, and 2) build alternative institutions.
Delegitimize the State
Do all you can to destroy the state's aura of legitimacy. This mainly involves education, since the "aura" is in people's minds. So long as most people see the state as the solution rather than the problem, freedom cannot generally reign. It will no doubt exist covertly, in Galt's Gulches, Costa Rican hideaways, and other isolated locales, but it will not gain broad enjoyment until most people desire to be free and have overcome their psychological dependency on the state. We know from history that revolution will not likely help (and may well hurt) if people's minds are not already "right" for liberty.Here are some things you can do to crush sheeple's mental dependence on the state:
Delegitimizing the State
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We have discussed several statist bromides and myths. These include the pluralist model of political power (the mistaken notion that the masses have significant input is the state's decision-making), and the kneejerk statist attitude that social problems can be solved by simply passing a law. Another myth, or more exactly, anti-concept, is the notion of "the public good" or "the common good." Since there is no interpersonal comparison of utility, the "common good" does not exist, except in the Pareto-optimal sense of everyone being no worse off. But of course, this is not the way statists mean it - they mean some people are better off at the cost of other people. Thus, in practice, the common good is whatever the ruling elites say is good for the dumb masses. Another common myth is that law (or legal systems, or courts) are the same as states. This can be proven incorrect by simply looking at history; states co-opted preexisting "natural" legal systems of society.
The stateholm syndrome is the use of an ambiguous collective ("we," "us," "them," "our") to hide and evade the difference between ruler and ruled. It is a coinage based on the well-known Stockholm syndrome suffered by prisoners and kidnap victims. When someone says, "We bombed Baghdad," they are revealing their mental victimhood to rulers. After all, the speaker (unless he's part of the ruling junto) did not bomb anyone, or order flunkies to bomb anyone - the ruling elite of the US state did. By identifying with mass-murderers, those who use this slave "we" are trivializing moral culpability and accepting undue blame. By such identification with the rulers, they unduly accept responsibility for the act, and make it psychologically harder to condemn it or correct it.
Another example is the slogan "Support Our Troops." First of all, they are the rulers' troops, not "ours." Secondly, such troops are almost always engaging in the killing of hapless foreigners, most of whom are non-combatants. Thus, they deserve condemnation, not support. Finally, "troops" is a sugar-coated word for what these people are - "hired thugs" is more apt. Thus, the libertarian translation of "support our troops" is "condemn the rulers' hired murderers."
One rough way to measure the libertarianism of a speaker is simply to count the number of times he uses "we" or "our" when he really means "the rulers." At best, this is catering to the statism of the audience, at worst it is mental surrender to the dark side. Either way, it does not help our case.
If there is one single thing that can free our minds, and the minds of others, it is the ruthless elimination of the slave "we" from our thoughts and speech. This is easier said than done - even the most libertarian people sometimes slip up. This shows how ubiquitous the statist programming of our lives has been, and how habituated we are to the statist paradigm.
Statist euphemisms abound. People say "public schools" when they mean "government schools." They refer to soldiers and freedom-fighters when its their state's guys, but insurgents and terrorists when it's their state's enemies guys. They call their fuhrers and oppressors "leaders" rather than "rulers." Even technical terms are sugar-coated. Laws outlawing employment for people unable to produce above an arbitrary level are called "minimum wage laws" rather than "minimum productivity laws." Plunder and forced redistribution is called "leveling the playing field" or "fairness." We need to avoid such drivel, and not be afraid to call a spade a spade. We cannot effectively argue against "fairness," but we can certainly argue against robbing productive people.
The statist paradigm is the world-view that the earth consists of competing "teams" called states, that everybody is on a team, and that one should support one's team. It is obvious how such a world-view favors statism, and why states promote such a view. As anarchists, we want subjected people to realize that they are not the rulers, nor are they the state or the government.
With the rise of democracy, the identification of the State with society has been redoubled, until it is common to hear sentiments expressed which violate virtually every tenet of reason and common sense such as, "we are the government." The useful collective term "we" has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over the reality of political life. If "we are the government," then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also "voluntary" on the part of the individual concerned. If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying that "we owe it to ourselves"; if the government conscripts a man, or throws him into jail for dissident opinion, then he is "doing it to himself" and, therefore, nothing untoward has occurred. Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered; instead, they must have "committed suicide," since they were the government ... - Murray N. Rothbard, The Anatomy of the State
We need to help people realize that the people and the rulers are not on the same team, on the contrary they are implacable enemies. We need for people to realize that the statist wars are not "us" against "them," but are the rulers who claim us as subjects versus the rulers that claim some other people as subjects. The respective peoples have no real stake in the quibbles of rulers, but so long as the people buy into the statist paradigm, they will be cannon-fodder for their rulers. The very existence of interstate war depends on the rulers being able to shove the costs of war onto their gullible subjects. As soon as enough people realize that they are not their rulers, the jig is up. The proper attitude to statist war would be to let the belligerent rulers have at each other in a wire cage with butcher knives, but leave the people out of it.
Build Alternatives to Currently Statist Services
Organize neighborhood and community arbitration systems as an alternative to state monopoly law and courts. Promote the use of alternate currencies, such as silver rounds, e-gold, or Liberty Dollars, as an alternative to statist fiat money. Help volutary community-betterment efforts like Habitat for Humanity, as an alternative to taxation and the state's Department of Housing and Urban Development.
There are two very common related fallacies that state-indoctrinated people tend to fall into. The first is the fallacy of government solipotence. This is the notion that good or service X cannot be provided in any other way except by a state. Most commonly, the X is arbitration (courts), police, and military (defense against foreign invaders), but some will hold the fallacy for road-building, education, and other things. Fortunately, a little study of history reveals that every morally permissable service ever offered by state has been done by voluntary means somewhere, at some time or another. Furthermore, when done voluntarily, the service is generally done better, and always done more morally (since aggression and plunder are not used.) If someone claims that service X can only be supplied by state, all a libertarian needs to do (if not already familiar with examples) is to look up that service in the ample libertarian literature and see how it was done privately. It used to be that this required a good library; now anyone can easily find such things on the internet.
The second fallacy is "the barefoot fallacy." If government didn't provide shoes, all but the wealthy would go barefoot. This is a weaker formulation of the fallacy above. It doesn't say that provision of service X cannot be done voluntarily, it simply says that voluntary provision would result in limiting the service to only the wealthy. The same remedy applies - just look up historical examples and note that they benefitted more than just the wealthy. This fallacy is popular among those who favor state-run education systems. When you look up literacy rates or other measures of educational quality and look at the "Prussian school" movement, it becomes obvious that the motivation for government takeover and centralization of education was to indoctrinate the children (especially of immigrants) into "proper" subservience to state, and resulted in a reduction of educational quality. Voltairine was right.
These two broad areas, destroying the legitimacy of state and building parallel structures, are particularly important for USAmericans in the 21st century. The US is the last remaining empire ("superpower"), and, as all empires eventually do, is well on its way to disintegration. Empires hang themselves on their own rope - the rope of empirial overstretch, massive spending, and hyperinflation. The US will very likely devolve in the first half of the 21st century, much as the USSR did at the end of the 20th century. The breakup will be a crisis and an opportunity. The critical importance of the two strategies is this: When the US breaks up, it will go one of two ways. Either people will call for a new tyrant, or people will opt for new, smaller political entities. Revolutionary France had its crisis and got Napolean; Germany had its hyperinflation crisis and got Hitler. On the other hand, the USSR had its crisis and devolved into many entities, with most of them a lot better off than under the Soviet yoke. Even the countries that were immediately worse off, had better long-term prospects than before.
Whether the US people will demand a Hitler or peacefully devolve into 50 or 60 smaller entities is an open question. But if we anarchist are successful in delegitimizing the state in enough people's minds, we may tip the balance to devolution. And if we have constructed enough parallel structures, money to use when the state's fiat money becomes worthless, rights protection systems, and mutual aid organizations, the transition from overarching state to panarchy need not be too wrenching. May USAmericans adjust as well and as peacefully as most former Soviet subjects did!
Lists of Specific Actions
There are two excellent lists of methods or techniques for direct action. One is from The Methods of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp (Boston 1973.) The other is from 101 Things To Do 'Til The Revolution (1999) by Claire Wolfe.
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." - Claire Wolfe.
Claire Wolfe's 101 Things To Do 'Til The Revolution
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Gene Sharp's Methods of Nonviolent Action
Most of these methods are appropriate for anti-statist action. The few statist items have been striken through.
Methods of Nonviolent Protest and PersuasionFormal Statements The Methods Of Social NoncooperationOstracism Of Persons The Methods Of Economic Noncooperation:
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The Methods Of Economic Noncoooperation:
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Opportunities for Counter-institutions
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What, then, do they want a government for? Not to regulate commerce; not to educate the people; not to teach religion; not to administer charity; not to make roads and railways; but simply to defend the natural rights of man - to protect person and property - to prevent the aggressions of the powerful upon the weak - in a word, to administer justice. This is the natural, the original, office of a government. It was not intended to do less: it ought not to be allowed to do more.- Herbert Spencer, Man Versus the State
It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action. The funds that a government spends for whatever purposes are levied by taxation. And taxes are paid because the taxpayers are afraid of offering resistance to the tax gatherers. They know that any disobedience or resistance is hopeless. As long as this is the state of affairs, the government is able to collect the money that it wants to spend. Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.- Ludwig von Mises, Human Action
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