Start using public key cryptography to the extent possible in your private correspondence. Encourage others to do so. Help non-technical users get started with it.

Support your neighborhood CopWatch. If you don’t have a neighborhood CopWatch, get in touch with the nearest one and ask for their advice and/or help in starting one.

Write to public forums that don’t usually publish anarchist material, but where you stand a chance of getting published anyway, explicitly advocating anarchism. For example, a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Include pointers to online resources where people can learn more about anarchist takes on the issue you’re writing about.

Find ways to get things that you need outside of the documented cash economy. For example, if there’s a Food Not Bombs in your town, you can get to know a bunch of other anarchists, do some mutual aid work, and, in the process, get some free food for your labor. If there isn’t a Food Not Bombs in your town yet, again, get in touch with existing FNB groups and try to start one. (There are lots of guides online.)

If you have it, I’d also recommend contributing some money to groups that provide direct relief and aid for victims of violence, and which combat cultural attitudes that promote violence. For example, I give a fixed percentage of my income to women’s shelters and groups like Women for Women International (which focuses on relief for women in war zones). By doing so I not only provide direct aid to real people and to a network of institutions which can supplant the supposed welfare functions of the State; I also remove that much more money from the taxed economy, and put it toward the purpose of healing and mutual aid, rather than what it would otherwise have been used for — graft, handcuffs, bombs, prisons, etc.

Incidentally, for reference, see also some brief remarks of mine on demythologizing the “higher law” doctrine, and the relationship between natural law and personal interest or commitment: (1), (2), (3).

Jeremy,

No; the voluntariness is key. Where did I suggest otherwise?

Well, I started this thread of conversation by asking a question about the rough handling of the few by the many in some non-consensual societies (e.g. Athens and Roman-occupied Palestine); got a response that the authority in question wasn’t necessarily rightful authority; asked if you meant mere power; and got a response that it was more than mere power that we were discussing, at which the shift over to consensual societies happened. As I said, I’m just having trouble understanding what claim you ultimately are defending about the relationship between numbers and authority, and trying to get clearer.

In a formula like “when a voluntary society stands up for a common end, that has authority to it,” there are at least three things doing conceptual work: (1) social (majority? supermajority?) consensus, (2) authority, and (3) the voluntary nature of the society (which I presume means that dissenters from the consensus have complete freedom of exit). But if (3) is doing no work in the relationship between (1) and (2), then the same claim would have to apply to non-consensual societies as well as consensual societies. If, on the other hand, (3) is doing some work, and is a necessary condition for (1) and (2) to have the claimed relationship that they have, then the question is what difference there might be between this claim about “voluntary society” (which, given freedom of association and freedom of exit, might consist of one person alone, or all rational creatures in the universe, or any size and arrangement in between) and the usual anarchist claim that all rightful authority derives from individual sovereignty and voluntary association (which again might mean one individual person, or the whole cosmopolis, or any size and arrangement in between). Maybe you meant to say something different, which I’m not grasping, in which case what I’d need to know to better understand it is how the claim about numbers and authority relates, if at all, to nonconsensual societies (where presumably the differences, if any, between these two claims would arise).

Or maybe you didn’t mean to say anything different, and just meant to restate the libertarian-individualist claim in other, panarchistic terms; but then I don’t see how that would connect with the claim libertarianism shouldn’t be about what is right or moral. Clearly, if this is the right understanding of your position, then your theory has already built in a very robust universal constraint of some kind on claims to the authority of superior numbers, which has nothing in itself to do with superior numbers, viz. the requirement of unanimous sustained consent to participation in the social project, whatever preferences or beliefs the majority faction may have. But if that requirement is an essential part of the claim you’re advancing, then it becomes increasingly hard for me to see how your claim is substantively different from mine, or how the requirement of consent is distinct from what I would call “natural law” or “inalienable natural rights.”

Admittedly, you might have a theory about the underlying status of the consent-requirement that is very different from what I would be willing to entertain — for example, you might think that while the consent-requirement is binding on every claim of authority, it’s only binding because, as a matter of taste, you prefer to hold people to a consent-requirement rather than not to hold them to it. But then, obviously, the question to ask is why anybody other than you should care about what requirements you would prefer to hold them to. I prefer that everyone drink unsweetened iced tea instead of sweet tea, but I’d never dream that these preferences give me the right to require bitter tea or resist vulgar sweetening by force. But requiring consent and resisting tyranny seem to be on quite a different footing.

As for what that footing may be, well, “sublime,” “over-arching,” “transcendent,” “Platonic,” etc. are your words, not mine. I’m not actually advancing any claim about the status of the moral constraints on claims of authority except to argue that they are not contingent on the beliefs or preferences of particular human beings. There are lots of things that are that way (e.g. the germ theory of disease) that don’t require much in the way of appeals to a separate and superior realm of Forms (or whatever) to talk about them.

My beliefs are just opinions, too. By treating them as such, I’m more likely to be able to present them in a way that others who don’t hold them find acceptable. Why? Because I understand the arbitrary nature of my beliefs, so I don’t pretend that they have some special truth that will compel somebody to acknowledge.

I don’t think that your solution, at least insofar as I’ve understood it, is nearly as eirenic as you seem to think it is. Look at it this way: my standards for consent and for the use of force against other people are either rooted in something outside of my particular preferences and tastes, which is in principle accessible to other people; or else they are not. If they are not, then I’m proposing to force other people to adhere to my own standards, whether or not those other people have any reason, even in principle, to care about the standards that I’m forcing them to hold to. This is, in the end, a proposal for trying to remake the whole world in my own image, for no reason other than the brute fact that it is my own image. If, on the other hand, they are rooted in something outside of my preferences and are in principle accessible to other people, then what I am proposing is that people other than myself do indeed have a reason to care about this stuff already, whether they’re aware of that reason or not, and my goal is not to remake them to suit my own preferences, but rather to take an interest in them as they are in their otherness, and in the things that they, as my fellow creatures, care about. That view gives me every reason to try and find the best way to communicate with those particular people and lead them from where they are now, towards a greater awareness of the reasons they already have; instead of what the other view seems to have on offer, which is a sort of talk in which “suggestion” that just amounts to bashing my no-less-but-no-more-justified preferences up against their no-more-but-no-less-justified preferences, until mine somehow win, on the basis of something other than shared reasoning.

Jeremy:

It goes beyond power; when a voluntary society stands up for a common end, that has authority to it.

O.K., I’m lost. I don’t think the Roman occupation of Palestine was an example of a voluntary society. It’s certainly true that in a voluntary society, consensus on a goal confers authority to pursue that goal. But do you intend to also transfer that claim about numbers and authority over to involuntary societies, like the American or Roman Empires? If so, what justifies the extension? If not, doesn’t that entail the existence of some principle constraining claims of authority, and undermining all claims of nonconsensual authority over others?

But they’re YOUR principles; in the end, they’re just preferences, opinions.

Well, I know you’re claiming this, but what’s the basis for claiming it?

And do you really mean to try and connect a radical form of moral relativism and a theory of majoritarian authority with Christian moral teachings?

smally:

I was under the impression that many state apologists will readily admit the government is a band of thugs, but that it is the “lesser evil”.

I don’t think that most liberal “lesser-evil” theories of the State recognize government as criminal. They recognize it as “an evil,” in the sense that it restrains liberty, but they generally go to some length to try to demonstrate the justice of nonconsensual political obligation (e.g., via a social contract, whether historical, tacit, or imaginary; or via non-contractual theories, such as Nozick’s procedural-rights account), and construe government as a service provided to citizens. Almost nobody defends the claim that government expropriation is no different in kind from brigandry, while also defending the claim that government expropriation should on (in order that even worse brigandry might be stopped. Maybe that’s what Hobbes believes, but not many followed him down quite that road.

So the upshot of lesser-evilist arguments is usually not that government is itself evil (in the contemporary sense of active wrongdoing), but rather that it’s bad relative to a utopian baseline, i.e., not as good a state of affairs as an anarchy composed of more or less ideal people. Since they rule out the ideal anarchy (for whatever reasons), you fall back to plan B. So government on this view is much more like fire insurance than like Mafia “protection”; something that, in an ideal world, you wouldn’t have to deal with, but which is morally permissible and which, in this vale of tears, you’re better off having, even at some cost.

I think these kind of arguments necessarily involve both (1) a lot of historical howlers in order to justify the claim that the single most deadly institution in the history of the world is actually defending people against chaos and destruction, and also (2) a lot of precisely the kind of mystification I’m talking about, in order to justify or at least excuse actively perpetrating evil against innocent people. (The cult of political compromise, the myth that democratic elections constitute mass consent to majoritarian or “representative” government, and the fabrication of tacit or imaginary social contracts to justify the legitimacy of government are all cases in point.)

You’re right that many if not most statists today like to fall back on utilitarian arguments in order to avoid arguments made on moral principle. Partly because forms of utilitarianism are very popular right now in both our intellectual and our mass culture; and partly also because it’s very handy to be able to abstract away any tricky questions about personal obligations, rights, virtues, vices, responsibility, complicity, defiance, etc. etc. etc. in order to zoom out to a depersonalized, God’s-eye-view calculation of aggregate outcomes. But I think that’s precisely because utilitarians start out by mystifying the issue and supposing that any question about the permissibility or legitimacy of coercing innocents has already been answered, when in fact it has merely been waved off as a necessary precondition of the utilitarian standpoint.

Well, I certainly agree that the Romans had the power to crucify Jesus.

Is that all you mean when you say that superior numbers confer authority?

It should be about what is possible, leaving the question of what possibility we pursue to the individuals

Would it be wrong for me not to “leave the question of what possibility we pursue to the individuals?”

If so, then isn’t that, in itself, a claim about what it is (or is not) “right” or “moral” to do?

If not, then why should you care whether I leave it up to the individuals or not, since there’s nothing wrong with my not doing so?

And this is a great example of why I think we’re diverging even as we state many similar principles. If concentrated power is the enemy, not the abrogation of rights, then there’s a lot that happens at the local, familial, and small group level that falls outside of the strict boundaries of libertarian concerns. So it’s natural that a “thick” libertarian would not approve of that kind of libertarianism.

I need to read the essay on thick and thin libertarianism again to make sure that I’m using those terms correctly; feel free to correct me or clarify muddy thinking.

Well, thin libertarianism is the position that “libertarian concerns” should be narrowly construed, as being exhausted by whatever your favorite specification of the non-aggression principle is (abrogation of individual rights, violations of equal liberty, initiation of force, whatever). Thick libertarianism is the position that “libertarian concerns” should be construed more broadly, as including a definite stance for or against at least some attitudes, practices, traditions, practices, projects, institutions, etc. that are logically consistent with, but not entailed by, the non-aggression principle. (All the forms I’ve discussed in my writing on the topic, at least, are forms of “thickness” in which the cause for concern is that the commitments that go beyond the logical entailments of a commitment to non-aggression are still linked to a commitment to non-aggression in some other, weaker, but still interesting sense — e.g. causally linked, or in application to specific cases, or in virtue of being two different conclusions of a common set of prior premises.)

Strictly speaking, if a “thin” libertarian is being consistent about the non-aggression principle, then she will still concern herself with things that happen outside the scope of the State insofar as they involve the direct use of violence — so, for example, her version of “libertarian concerns” would still properly include non-State forms of systemic coercion like race slavery or violence against women. A “thick” libertarian would agree, but take it one step further to include things other than the express acts of violence, which she takes to be importantly connected with the express acts of violence (e.g. white supremacist prejudices, patriarchal rape culture, etc.).

I don’t think the distinction lines up neatly with the question of whether the libertarian or anarchist in question focuses narrowly on anti-statism or generalizes to cases other than the State. (Cf. 1. Some “thin” libertarians do tend to write as if the State were the only significant form of systemic coercion, and “thick” libertarians may be more likely to recognize the existence of other forms of systemic coercion, but in principle a “thin” libertarian might very well recognize other forms, while a “thick” libertarian might in principle regard statism as the only significant form of systemic coercion around, and devote her time spent on “thick” concerns entirely to the stuff that she takes to be causally or conceptually supporting statism.)

So thick libertarians will probably tend to be much more interested in things like a critique of institutionalizing or otherwise concentrating social power, even without that critique cashing out at some point in references to rights-violations. Thin libertarians will tend to argue that those concerns are either uninteresting, or, if interesting, still outside the scope of libertarianism per se.

I’m not sure how far this clarifies the point that you were interested in clarifying.

… I think numbers *do* constitute authority …

Authority for what?

Do you mean to suggest that, for example, that superior numbers gave Anytus’s party the rightful authority to kill Socrates, or the Roman occupiers the rightful authority to crucify Jesus?

If so, why? If not, then what do their superior numbers give them the rightful authority to do?

Jeremy,

I’d like to suggest that the chief reason libertarians and anarchists spend more time assailing government than they spend assailing “mere” crime isn’t so much that the former is institutionalized while the latter isn’t. There are plenty of examples of “mere” crime that’s institutionalized — the Mafia, for starters — that libertarians and anarchists also don’t spend much time fulminating.

What I think is more likely is that libertarians and anarchists spend a lot of time and rhetorical energy on government because over and over again we see that the violence of the State apparatus, no matter how intense and no matter how obviously harmless or helpless its victims, is ideologically mystified, morally excused, and either widely treated as legitimate or else simply rendered invisible, whereas most “mere” crime is not. It doesn’t take a lot of rhetorical energy to convince most people that the Mafia is a band of thugs; most everybody knows that being a band of thugs is their business. Most people don’t know, or don’t consistently realize, that being a band of thugs is the government’s business. Hence the effort to demystify, delegitimize, and get people to come down and look at the actions of governors and their hirelings the way they would look at similar conduct by someone without a badge or a pompous title on letterhead.

Note that when libertarians have been especially concerned with exposing and condemning some form of systemic violence carried out mostly outside of the formal State apparatus — for example the “private” violence of race slavery, or violence against women, or adult domination of children — it is more or less always a parallel system of violence which is, like the State, mystified as being something other than violence, culturally excused, and either explicitly socially accepted or else kept silent and made invisible. Even when (as in the case of, for example, violence against women) there may be various kinds of institutional support or institutional denialism for the violence, but the paradigmatic locus of the violence is in informal actions by one ordinary person against another, carried out in private settings.

I should note that the mystification of State violence also seems to play an important role in arguments that try to undermine the ideal of a consensual society by appealing to the ignorance, folly, or vice of mortal creatures. Of course we are all prone to ignorance, folly, or vice in this vale of tears. But that is precisely the reason to oppose all forms of coercive power. Every government is run by those same imperfect, sinful people that it supposedly exists to straighten out, and certainly the would-be bellowing blowhard lords of the world are no more immune to pride, cruelty, or sharp dealing than ordinary business-people, workers, etc. Quite the opposite. If it’s utopian to imagine perfecting human nature, then certainly you have every reason to centrally concern yourself with institutions, practices, projects, traditions, etc. which take all the ignorance, folly, and vice of those who come out on top of the power-struggle, and then magnify it, concentrate it, regularize it, and insulate it from both criticism and resistance.

That libertarians are simply more consistent in their advocacy of non-agression is no mind-boggingly unique contribution to political discourse; it’s actually just a preference

I don’t know what you mean by this. Clearly one can have a preference for consistency — I’d hope everyone does — but is the phrase “just a preference” supposed to indicate that preferring consistent application of moral principles over inconsistent application of moral principles isn’t backed by some prior logical and/or moral obligation? That it’s just a matter of taste, like preferring milk over lemon in your tea? If so, why do you believe that? If not, then what work is the word “just” doing here?

And I agree with you that, as distasteful as it may be to us, government is comprised of genuine traditions, norms, and social identity.

Again, I’m confused by what you mean here. Are there libertarians or anarchists who deny that government is comprised of genuine traditions, norms, and social identity? (What then do they believe it is comprised of? Idiosyncratic rather than traditional practice?)

The point of anarchistic critique is not that government somehow exists separately from traditions, norms, and social identity, but rather that some traditions, norms, and ways of understanding your social identity are foolish, vicious, or otherwise objectionable, and in particular that the the statist elements of those traditions, norms, and social identity are in need of critique, reform, or revolutionary transformation.

One realization I’ve come to is that I don’t have a problem with force being exerted by society, so long as it is society, and not a particular class of society, executing the force.

And again, I’m confused by what you mean. Force is never exerted “by society.” It is exerted by individual people who live in a society, and, when it’s coordinated, it is always coordinated by an organized faction within that society (whether spontaneously or deliberately ordered), not by the “society” as a whole. This is no less true of “citizen militias” than it is true of professionalized police or government armies. (Barring universal conscription, there will always be a fair number of people who decline to participate. And there will always be a fair number of people — young children, frail people, paralyzed people, etc. — who are incapable of participating. Aside from any limitations through cultural or institutional prejudice, the nature of the practice necessarily limits participation.)

As far as I can see, the only important question here is, not who is or is not exercising the force, but rather how it is being exercised: whether it is being exerted prudently or destructively, and, when it is exerted, whether it is being exerted to vindicate just claims or to violate and suppress just claims. Insofar as there’s a question of “who” involved, it’s only a question of which factions, and which forms of organization, are the most likely to abstain from destructive or aggressive uses of force, and most likely to pursue wise and righteous uses of force. I think the superiority of citizen militias here over unaccountable paramilitary cops or imperial standing armies is obvious, but the reasons for that superiority have little if anything to do with some mythic direction of force by the General Will. It just has to do with what we, each of us individually, in our ordinary lives, are prone to do under different circumstances, when we are dependent on others for our safety, or when we have unaccountable power over others, or when we are able to defend ourselves, or when we are working cooperatively with our neighbors, etc. etc. etc.

John,

The most unfortunate thing about “anarchism” may be the name, which may lead one to believe anarchists are against all gov’t, when really (as I understand it) they are perfectly willing to cooperate with their neighbors for the common good, a good that must inevitably, at times, impinge upon their personal good.

But, John, the reason that anarchists call themselves anarchists is that they are against all government–as they understand government. If you want to introduce your own definition of the word “government,” which includes absolutely any arrangement for cooperation between individual people, no matter how informal, consensual, non-territorial, non-monopolistic, and accountable to external constraints of justice, then you’re free to use the word “government” that way, but your definition of the term (which I think is much further from the common use of the term than anarchists’ definition) would seem to be of little help either in understanding why anarchists call themselves what they call themselves, or in advising them on what they ought to call themselves to maximize clarity.

What they are not willing to do, and what no man [sic] should be willing to do, is to deprive the many in favor of the few,

I don’t see what numbers have to do with it. Of course it’s terrible when the many are forcibly deprived in favor of the few, and this is what almost always happens under the auspices of government (even so-called majoritarian government), where the governing class is always an elite minority parasitic upon the productive labor of the governed. But is it any less terrible when the minority, or an individual person, are forcibly deprived in favor of the majority, which has certainly also happened over and over again in history? (Cf. Socrates, Jesus, the Christian martyrs, Catholics in Reformation England, Protestants in Counter-Reformation Spain and France, Jews and Muslims and Romani all across Europe…) The only reason I can see why “the many” would, as a group, be entitled to demand that they will not be beaten or robbed or swindled by an elite few is because each of them, naked and alone with nothing other than her humanity, is just as entitled to demand that she will be beaten or robbed or swindled by anybody else, whether they are few or many. That’s rights, as I see it, and everybody’s got them whether or not they have a large enough posse.

I think you’re right on about most of the points you touch on here. (Utah Phillips has a good monologue about just this topic, The Violence Within.) But here’s something that, given the rest of what you say, I find baffling.

Among many other people I count soldiers in this group, not least because of the oath they take to defend our best institutional hope against tyranny: the Constitution.

I certainly hope that the Constitution is not “our best institutional hope against tyranny.” If it is, we are all seriously in trouble.

But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

— Lysander Spooner, No Treason No. 6: The Constitution of No Authority.

Anyway, practical questions aside, the right and the duty of soldiers to refuse tyrannical orders is a duty of conscience, which is higher than any government law or mortal oath. I can’t see what in the world the Constitution has to do with it.

Jeremy,

Furthermore, I know that my participation is interpreted as support for the institution, regardless of my electoral choice or my intent in voting.

Well, sure, but won’t your refusal to vote be interpreted—by exactly the same people—as acquiescing to the political status quo?

You could say that it’s not just a matter of refusing to vote, it’s a matter of refusing to vote plus explaining to people why you’re refusing to participate in the election. But then couldn’t you just as easily choose to vote plus explain to people why you are choosing to participate in the political process?

That said, there are circumstances under which I would vote. I would vote if I were willing to back up my electoral choice with violent action. In such a case my vote is a proxy for my own willingness to compel others to accept a just outcome. However, I see no scenario where that kind of circumstance is likely to occur.

If I lived in South Dakota, I’d vote to repeal the state abortion ban in the upcoming referendum on precisely these grounds. If Michigan ever ends up with a referendum to restore the death penalty — which is not at all out of the realm of possibility — I think that voting against that would be another clear-cut instance.

I can’t see any reason to vote that doesn’t imply that I view the state as legitimate, and therefore no way to act that doesn’t view its actions as originating in real authority, whether or not I agree with the actions.

Well, I think the problem here is that you’re giving too much credit to the State’s own legitimating myths. There are cases in which participating in a process means tacitly accepting the legitimacy of the proceeding, and tacitly consenting to the outcome. But voting, at least, is not among them. For participation to count as consent, even tacit consent, it must be the case that refusing to participate would have exempted you from the outcome. Otherwise, I can’t see how the “permission” you give to the government by voting is any different from the “permission” you give a mugger to take your money instead of your life when you hand over your wallet. Here’s how Lysander Spooner put much the same point in No Treason:

In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man takes the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot —- which is a mere substitute for a bullet —- because, as his only chance of self- preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him.

Doubtless the most miserable of men, under the most oppressive government in the world, if allowed the ballot, would use it, if they could see any chance of thereby meliorating their condition. But it would not, therefore, be a legitimate inference that the government itself, that crushes them, was one which they had voluntarily set up, or even consented to.

Therefore, a man’s voting under the Constitution of the United States, is not to be taken as evidence that he ever freely assented to the Constitution, even for the time being. Consequently we have no proof that any very large portion, even of the actual voters of the United States, ever really and voluntarily consented to the Constitution, even for the time being. Nor can we ever have such proof, until every man is left perfectly free to consent, or not, without thereby subjecting himself or his property to be disturbed or injured by others.

I’d be happy to take an anti-electoral line if it were true that everyone who refused to vote didn’t have to deal with tax-men, law-men, hangmen, or Congressmen anymore. But it isn’t, so I don’t see how the decision to vote or not to vote, just by itself, says anything about your moral relationship to the State. (Of course, whom you vote for, and why you vote for them, might.)

I should say that I hardly think that voting is the only or the best or even a particularly effective form of self-defense against the State — I think that voting on single-issue referenda is better than voting for so-called representatives, and that education, symbolic civil disobedience, direct action, etc. are all far better than voting of any kind. So there’s not a particularly pressing reason to get out there and do it. But the opportunity cost for voting in either kind of election is fairly low, so I don’t see a pressing reason not to do it, either, and if the stakes are high it may be worth your time.