Kevin: I think the net effect in this case, as in many hypothetical scenarios of dismantling the state in the wrong order, would be–as counterintuitive as it may seem–to increase the net level of exploitation carried out with the help of the state.

Well, I’m not sure that that’s especially counterintuitive. I’m perfectly willing to grant that there are plenty of cases where it’s true. What I’m trying to stress is that, as far as I can tell, we don’t disagree very much about the net consequences of different sequences of repeal. I agree that in the hypothetical case I gave, there might very well be a net increase in the predominance of class exploitation in the markets for labor, land, etc.

But, while I agree with you on that, I also think you have to keep in mind that when you make political choices you’re not just making choices about which God’s-eye-view net outcome you would prefer. You’re acting within the world, as one mortal creature among many fellow creatures, and when you deliberate about what to do you have to deliberate about what sort of person you, personally, are going to be, and what you, personally, are or aren’t willing to do to another human being. I know that I, personally, couldn’t live with deliberately choosing to shove around or rob another human being, or letting another human being go on being shoved around or robbed, for even a second longer, if all I needed to do to stop the latter would be to push a button, no matter how much I might prefer the results that I might be able to get from it. Because I’m not a thief or a bully, and I don’t want to let myself become an accomplice of thieves or bullies, either, even if it would otherwise improve my quality of life. Hence why I’d push the button, immediately and without reservation, even though I do in fact think that the net consequences of doing so would be substantially worse, in terms of things that I care about and which affect me personally, than the net consequences of repeal in the opposite order.

So I’m anti-gradualism not because I’m anti-dialectics, but rather because I think that there are personal obligations of justice involved in the political choices you make, and that dialectically-grounded praxis has to integrate those personal obligations into your course of action just as much as it has to integrate the general, big-picture view of class dynamics, socio-political structure, et cetera. In fact, if a process of deliberation abstracts away from the ground-level personal obligations of justice, fair treatment, etc. that we all have to each other, and only reckons what to do based on some very high-level structural-functional considerations about society as a whole and global-level net consequences, then I’d say that process of deliberation has become dangerously one-sided and acontextual. A praxis that doesn’t take into account what I could or couldn’t live with as a conscientious human being is an anti-dialectical and indeed an inhuman praxis.

But I fear that I’m beginning to throw a lot of jargon at the problem. Does that clarify or muddify?

Kevin: I’d probably even quibble as to whether it amounted to a reduction in statism even as such, since a high marginal tax rate on Bill Gates arguably amounts to the state ameliorating or moderating its primary act of statism in guaranteeing the income to Gates in the first place through IP.

Sure; this is a legitimate concern, to the degree that the exploitation in question is based not only on profiteering from the ripple effects of other, directly coercive acts, but where the exploitation is itself directly coercive (as is the case in government-enforced monopolies and captive markets). I would agree that there is some non-zero proportion of Bill Gates’s annual income, for example, which he actually has no legitimate property right to at all, and so no moral right to complain about taxation, any more than a slave-ship captain has a moral right to complain about a pirate making off with “his” gold, rum, and slaves. In such cases, my basic attitude is Tucker’s good old “No pity, no praise.”

But there are a couple problems in trying to translate this into any conclusion about income tax policy. Income tax policy has no way of distinguishing the legitimate portion of Bill Gates’s income (which I presume is also non-zero) from the extorted portion of it. In fact, in most cases, I think it would be impossible even in principle to calculate what the right proportions would be; in the absence of an actual free market process, there’s just no way to know how much of an intellectual monopolist’s income is legitimate and how much of it is an extorted monopoly rent.

And, beyond that, the tax also imposed alike on everyone in that income tax bracket, whether or not their income derives from direct violations of individual rights in the way that copyright and patent monopolists’ income does. Many if not most of the top 10% derive a lot of their income from direct coercion, but many of them do not (rather, they get fatter-than-free-market profits by profiteering of the ripple effects of other people’s coercion; but, while that’s also ethically objectionable, it’s a very different case from the standpoint of whether those profits can justly be expropriated). And if there’s even one single person who is robbed of even one cent of legitimately earned wealth by the general tax policy — and I think it’s next to impossible that nobody would be unjustly victimized by the tax — then, again, I think that’s reason enough to push the button. I couldn’t leave that one guy to go on getting robbed, even though all the rest of the people affected by the tax be a gang of pirates, swindlers, and extortionists. There are cases where expropriating the expropriators is legitimate and just; but government taxation is far too blunt a weapon to ever achieve it without inflicting a lot of collateral damage on innocent people.

Kevin,

I’m not actually sure that we disagree about that. Or, if we do disagree, then what we disagree about may be a bit different from what it might initially seem that we disagree about.

I actually agree with you that a dialectical understanding of the role of particular government programs in the statist social order is important. And I also agree with you that some sequences of repeal would lead to better overall results than other sequences of repeal, and I suspect that we largely agree with each other about what sequences would be preferable; for example, because of my understanding of the class dynamics of statist power, I think that abolishing the Wagner-Taft-Hartley first and then the antitrust laws later would have better overall results than abolishing the antitrust laws first and then the Wager-Taft-Hartley system later, in that the one first opens up space and time for de-regimenting organized labor and opening up space for workers to organize against exploitation by bosses, while the other opens up space and time for bosses to further consolidate and fortify their command-posts in the labor market.

Similarly, suppose you had a Sedition law, and a Hate Speech law, the first of which which banned anarchist speeches, and the second of which banned fascist speeches. Ideally, the best thing to happen would be for both laws to be struck down immediately and completely in favor of complete free speech. But if the political debate was such that it’s more or less unavoidable that one will be struck down before the other, then I suppose that the sequence of decriminalizing anarchist speeches, then decriminalizing fascist speeches would have better overall results than the sequence of decriminalizing fascist speeches, then decriminalizing anarchist speeches.

However, I don’t think that accepting either that method of social theory or those conclusions about likely results settles the question as to whether you should be a gradualist or an immediatist. I’m an immediatist, not because I deny that there’s ever an importance difference in the likely results of repealing A-before-B as versus repealing B-before-A, but rather because I think that there are things that nobody ever has the moral right to do to another human being, no matter what results you can get from it, and one of those things is coercing her in her use of her own person and property. If both A and B are genuinely coercive, then I’d argue that there’s never any justification or excuse for continuing to do either of them. Even if it would be better for A to go first and then B, rather than B to go first and then A, if the opportunity to repeal B arises before the opportunity to repeal A does, then I’d say that it’s morally obligatory to repeal B anyway, because neither you nor I nor anybody else has the right to go on coercing anybody for even a second longer, whatever our considered judgment about the likely results of their freedom may be.

Of course, if there isn’t any opportunity to repeal either A or B at the moment, then the question is what sort of strategy you ought to adopt in the effort to make the opportunity arise. And in that case, it’s perfectly reasonable for your considered judgment about likely results to determine your strategic priorities, in terms of which forms of coercion you will first and most intensely focus on making repeal-able, given your limited time and resources. And I think that we largely agree about

So I reckon that the question is this: suppose you had a rather limited version of Rothbard’s Magic Button, which would allow you to magically repeal (say) personal income tax on the top 10% of taxpayers, while leaving all other personal income tax and FICA payroll tax in place. And let’s take it for granted that we all dialectically understand the role of the State, and its different functions, within the social order of power and its relationship with the dynamics of class exploitation. Still. There’s the button. Would you push it, or would you refuse to push it, on the grounds that you need to cut taxes either from the bottom-up or else not at all?

Personally, I would push it. I would prefer the bottom-up-first sequence, if it were available (after all, that’d benefit me more personally, let alone the rest of the working class), but I don’t believe that I have the right to let other people go on being robbed, if I could stop it with nothing more than a button-push, just so that I can, or some other people that I care about can, enjoy a higher quality of life.

What about you?

I think we agree that incremental reforms, where they can be gotten, would be preferable to the status quo. The important thing is to be clear about the difference between (1) supporting incremental measures for strategic reasons, in order to pry whatever limited relief you can out from under a horrid political system, and (2) compromising moral principle by accepting, or pretending to accept, that some kinder, gentler, more efficient form of international apartheid could possibly be just or prudent or excusable. (1) is a perfectly reasonable political strategy, but it is worth nothing, or even less, when accompanied by (2) rather than by a principled moral opposition to the violent punishment of peaceful immigrants.

As Garrison said, “Urge immediate abolition as earnestly as we may, it will alas! be gradual abolition in the end. We have never said that slavery would be overthrown by a single blow; that it ought to be we shall always contend.”