Comments Elsewhere

Bill: That means that they view these voluntary choices of others as oppression.

That’s correct, the thick conception of libertarianism they (I) defend includes an explicit claim that voluntary social interactions can be oppressive without ceasing to be voluntary. I don’t see this as a problem for the view. I see it as the point of the view.

Bill: Unless they assume some massive amount of masochism on the part of those they’re claiming are oppressed, they’ve given themselves veto power over legitimacy of the voluntary interactions of those who don’t adopt similar attitudes …

I don’t know what kind of “veto power” you have in mind. If you think that a position against non-aggressive forms of oppression involves some tendency to individually disapprove of, or, say, to non-violently socially stigmatize, at least some behaviors, interactions or relationships which are admittedly voluntary (in the sense of being acted out through strictly non-aggressive means), then of course you are right about that. But is that “veto power” in any meaningful sense of the term? Certainly not in any meaning of the term that involves an exercise of aggressive power. Again, the point of the view, as stated by those who advance it, is to provide some considerations in favor of addressing non-violent social problems through non-violent social means. (Rather than, say, holding that there just are no non-violent social problems, by definition.) If, on the other hand, you think that calling X “oppressive” means assuming “veto power” over X in the sense of legitimating the use of political force to repress X, then, again, that is what the people in question (me included) explicitly deny, and have denied all along. (See for example this discussion of “the authoritarian theory of politics.”)

Given that we have explicitly called for the use of non-violent social activism and cultural change instead of any use of political force to address the oppressive-but-non-aggressive dynamics that we’ve discussed, any charge that what we’re proposing must ultimately logically lead to criminalizing those dynamics seems to be completely unfounded in what we’ve argued. Of course, you might hold that social stigma, cultural politics, etc. can all be problems even if they are not leading into political force — you might hold that the attitudes we take are, say, narrow-minded, or intolerant, or busybodying. And I don’t agree that they are, but you might have an argument for that. (Certainly I don’t think that “social stigma,” say, is something harmless when misused, even though it may be non-aggressive.) But then of course you too are advocating a thick conception of libertarianism — just one which connects libertarianism, say, with a very broad norm of social tolerance, and which exercises a great deal of skepticism towards any sort of social pressure or conscious non-violent activism, rather than with the sort of anti-oppression activism that I have tended to promote. And the argument is not going to be an argument about whether libertarianism should be conceived thinly (as a demand strictly independent of other social or individual norms) or thickly (as integrated with other, interlocking commitments) — it will just be an argument about what other commitments a thick conception of libertarianism ought to be integrated with.

. . . The "mutual aid" societies are intended to help you pay for the appendix to get taken out. Not to help you out with direct service provision. (At least, that's certainly how self-described mutual aid societies and friendly societies operated when they were relatively common, in the late 19th/early 20th century -- as a form of grassroots, consumer-owned insurance.) For that matter, the welfare office doesn't cut out your appendix either; they give you money which you pay to the doctor who does the cutting.

“If one takes the notion that the traditional social customs voluntarily practiced and accepted represent some sort of “coercion” on par with the government’s use of force, an aggression, ….”

If one took that position, maybe they would have the problems you describe. But that is explicitly not the position that is being advanced by work on “thick” conceptions of libertarianism. The entire point of a “thick” conception of libertarianism, as explicitly defined in articles like this one or this one, is that libertarianism may appropriately concern itself with feminist, “countercultural” and other anti-authoritarian concerns even when those concerns have no direct connection with acts of coercion and even when those concerns do not involve “an aggression,” because (they argue) libertarians as individuals, and libertarianism as a political theory, may appropriately concern themselves with at least some things that are non-aggressive but oppressive for other reasons. (So a “thick” conception of libertarianism holds that non-aggression is the only social norm that is enforceable. But that it’s not the only social norm. And it’s not the only social norm that is significant to libertarianism.)

Maybe that claim is wrong, too. But whether it’s wrong or not, it has nothing to do with the different claim you are indicting here.

just finished a new typesetting for Kevin Carson’s “The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand.” Part of this will go into this month’s Market Anarchy zine, “The Subsidy of History.” The rest will also be available as a long-form, separate booklet.

Replying to my brief parenthetical comment about default outcomes in case (c) that don’t uncritically privilege parents of an adult son or daughter over someone she has been living with for years, you write:

TracyW: You do realise that sometimes people do live on platonic terms with flatmates for years?

Right, which is why common-law marriage has historically depended on features other than simply the cohabiting in order to determine an intention to be treated as married, with the kinship relationships that come along with that. In particular, it has usually depended on (1) a recognition that the relationship is probably sexually “consummated,” and (2) the public “habit and repute” of the couple to present themselves as husband and wife, even without any definitive public announcement or witnessed formal ceremony. (If your idea is that existing forms of state marriage have only been recognized where the high standards of formal public ceremony you mentioned above were met, then of course your idea is a historical fantasy.) I didn’t go to great length to specify these “non-platonic” features of the relationship because I was answering on the assumption that I could take your characterization of the relationship, when setting up the hypothetical, more or less in good faith, but if you didn’t intend for those “non-platonic” features to be assumed in discussing the hypothetical, then we can go back and talk about different possible cases.

In any case, in societies with governments, it has typically been believed that simply privileging A’s parents over B in the absence of a formal marriage ceremony, no matter how intimate and how long-standing A and B’s relationship may have been, would be obviously unjust, so they have adopted legal conventions and customs that recognize a marriage in many cases where there had been no formal ceremony,(*) and somehow, even though in the past it was actually far more common for unrelated people to live in the same house with each other, folks largely managed to figure out ways around problems like crazy flatmates you’d never want to marry, etc. But a society without government is of course not a society without any local customs or conventions, and if A and B live in an anarchic community then the community they live in will no doubt have developed local customs about determining the default next-of-kin which are no less adaptive and creative than what people came up with under states. (Indeed, they might well come up with some new conventions that do a better job than the traditional customs, e.g. in recognizing and taking seriously the forms of intimacy in same-sex relationships where presumptive next-of-kin status might be reasonable, or possibly in considering other kinds of intimacy other than sexual intimacy, etc.)

But, in any case, no matter how crazy or unsuitable the conventions that might be developed in an anarchic community, those who do not like the default customary outcomes will not be constrained to stick with those customary outcomes by any territorial monopoly on legal recognition; they will be free to explicitly designate that they don’t want the default customary outcome. (So if A really has good reason to worry about her crazy flatmate, or crazy live-in sex partner, or whatever, being recognized as next-of-kin, even though they don’t publicly indicate any intent to be treated as next-of-kin to each other, etc., then it is open to A, and up to her, to make some effort to explicitly designate someone else.)

(* States have been moving against this trend recently, and many, especially in Europe, have eliminated many categories of “irregular” marriage from their codes in the past few decades. But this is a historical exception, not at all the rule; and it should be no surprise that the general trend in modern states has often been to demand totalistic licensing, and compliance with formal ceremony at the expense of substantively just outcomes. So much the worse for nationalized marriage.)

TracyW: Modern Western states provide numerous other legal conventions, entities, etc, for those who wish for alternatives to the current norm. One can set up partnerships, trusts, living wills, power-of-attorney, etc. For example monasteries and nunneries for example still operate in modern Western societies and must have some legal set-up to own or rent property.

I am aware of all of these mechanisms, and some others you didn’t mention. (For example, in the past some gay couples would actually have one partner legally adopt the other in order to kludge their way around the range of next-of-kin issues involved in the absence of marriage.) I have some reasons for thinking that these are not fully adequate as solutions. (Both because of some significant legal gaps because of what they can and cannot cover in normal cases, and also because of the extraordinarily high and discriminatory transaction costs they can impose in setting them up, etc.) But this is of course simply taking the course of denying that there is any significant problem currently with respect to gay marriage. If you want to believe that, I will disagree with you, but the disagreement has nothing essentially to do with a disagreement about anarchism, government, polycentricity, monopoly, or any of the other issues you’ve tried to tie it to; it’s a disagreement about the need for gay marriage (or other alternatives to the dominant model), not a disagreement about whether or not market anarchy can successfully recognize it.

Of course “partnerships, trusts, living wills, power-of-attorney, etc.” could be set up and reocgnized in the polycentric institutions of a market anarchy as well or as poorly as marriages or any other kind of agreement. If (for the sake of argument) I granted that the state really does handle these tolerably well, and if these really do suffice to handle alternative models of marriage or kinship, then their availability might give left-wing market anarchists some reason to abandon the specifically left-wing considerations in favor of their radical approach to problems of state marriage (e.g., it might undermine a specifically gay-liberationist case for getting the state out of it). But it hardly affects other, independent reasons that market anarchists have for favoring the radical approach (i.e., it doesn’t do anything to undermine the general libertarian case for getting the state out of it).

Now as a few of your questions have indicated, perhaps you didn’t understand that Gary was in fact an anarchist, or that he was introducing positions for which he has both specifically left-wing and also specifically libertarian reasons for advocating. (Or that he intended for the libertarian reasons to apply quite broadly, i.e. to disputes over land, contracts, etc. quite broadly, not only to questions about marriage.) If you didn’t realize that, well, now you know. Or perhaps you fundamentally misunderstood what getting the state to depart from recognizing marriages means. (Certainly, some of your questions seem to indicate that you think Gary is proposing a society in which nobody pays any attention to formal ceremonies, rather than simply a society in which formal ceremonies no longer require the backing of a territorial monopoly.) Or you may perhaps want to have an argument which is not about recognition and dispute resolution in a market anarchy, but instead about the details of the left-wing case that there are significant political problems in state marriage as it currently exists (e.g. problems having to do with gay couples or people with other alternatives in mind), which one might want to take either a reformist or a radical approach towards. If so I’m happy to leave that argument for someone else to take up with you.

In any case dragging the conversation into a general discussion of the basic mechanisms of dispute-resolution under market anarchy seems like a change of subject, when the subject is really your views on gay marriage rather than Gary’s views on what to do about it.

Me: A does not need parental agreement to designate someone else as his proxy for medical decision-making (or any other kind). It’s not a “right” that they have to waive (A is their child, not their property); it’s a privilege that they have as long as A still consents to give it to them.

TracyW: But A is unconscious, and unable to consent to anything.

It is hard to know what you’re trying to get at at this point, unless you are simply forgetting the question in debate, or changing the subject without saying so. You asked about what A should do “if A is thinking ahead of time, and wants to sign a contract to keep his parents out of the decision.” Of course if A is thinking ahead of time, then the answer is what I said: A doesn’t need the consent of A’s parents. If you want to change the question to ask what A’s supposed to do once A is already unconscious (?!) then of course the answer is that A no longer has a chance to do anything about it, and disputes will have to be handled according to the customary social processes we’ve been discussing. But that’s not a problem that’s unique to anarchy; in any sort of society at all, with or without government, if you don’t make any effort to get an outcome other than the conventional default, then you’re going to be stuck with the conventional default. The question then becomes whether the conventions available ought to be based on the unilateral authority of a territorial state; or whether it ought to be based on something else (e.g. freely-developing local custom, etc.).

TracyW: Indeed, what happens under your polycentric, overlapping outlets if one of those legal outlets is heartily opposed to same-sex sexual relationships? …

Then they most likely won’t recognize it. And people who want to have their same-sex sexual relationships impact decisions about next-of-kin then they will no doubt make some effort to ensure that the “outfit” certifying their relationship is one that doesn’t have a hearty opposition to same-sex sexual relationships. (If you want to have a same-sex marriage, and you also want to get married in the Catholic Church, you’re probably going to have a problem. But not a problem that can really be solved without either you or the Catholic Church to make an unacceptable concession on a question of conscience. So probably you will have to get married elsewhere. But part of the point of polycentrism is to ensure that there are at least plenty of elsewheres to get married.)

If your question is, what’s to keep the hospital from operating on the Catholic Church’s views about your marriage, rather than operating on the views of the place where you got married, then my answer is that in an anarchic society it would be pretty odd to expect hospitals to select a completely arbitrary authority to certify or nullify a marriage, rather than selecting the outfit the married couple had actually chosen to certify it. If you’re asking what’s to keep a doctor who has, or a hospital which is run by people who also have, hearty religious or moral opposition to same-sex marriage from only listening to outlets whose authority they accept (say, a Catholic hospital might only accept marriages within the Catholic Church, or might only accept marriages that meet some of the RCC’s criteria, etc.), then the answer is that in an anarchic society nothing will forbid the hospital from doing that (in the sense of outlawing it), but nothing will forbid people from seeking care from other hospitals or other doctors, and if this is likely to be a problem for same-sex couples then those couples can always take some care to ensure that their medical providers will be people who do recognize their marriage. (Similarly, if you want to get contraception, you will probably have to take the care to look for an apothecary who is willing to sell it, etc.) If your question is what’s to keep an outfit that’s really heartily opposed to same-sex relationships from forcibly intervening to stop the decision from being made by a tolerant outfit that allows them, and a doctor who accepts the tolerant outfit’s certification, then the answer falls under the general answer to questions about why non-governmental defense associations won’t go to war with each other whenever they have a dispute. (You might see Roderick Long’s shorter discussion of this in Libertarian Anarchism: Responses to Ten Objections for a start; this is also widely discussed in more or less all market anarchist literature about private dispute-resolution and defense agencies.)

TracyW: The question is what counts as an explicit waiver. … Given the high incentives to lie when large sums of money are involved, a community might want to set a high level of proof as to what counts as an agreement, for example, maybe two witnesses. Or maybe as well as the witnesses, some respected member of the community there who can check that the legal forms are followed, and who has a reputation in the community to worry about. Plus everyone involved could sign a piece of paper, which could be put on record somewhere known.

Maybe you’re right about this, and maybe you are not. But whether you’re right about this or not, you do seem to have lost track of what we’re arguing about. Of course I never said (and Gary never said) there was anything necessarily wrong with people choosing to use something like the presence or absence of a public, documentable marriage ceremony as part of determining the most reasonable choice for next-of-kin in case of situations (b) or (c). The claim Gary argued for is the claim that publicity, documentation and ceremony in this regard needn’t, and shouldn’t, have anything in particular to do with state recognition. Nothing at all that you describe in this passage (witnesses, disinterested or respected officiant, formal ceremony, written and authenticated documentation) requires a territorial state be involved at any point in the process. If your argument is that marriage may in some cases be a useful social institution, which need not have anything to do with a state, then that’s not an argument against Gary’s position. If your argument is that marriage must be licensed by a state to be useful, you haven’t given any argument at all for that conclusion.