On Revolution: The Right to Smash the State

Subject: On Revolution: The Right to Smash the State Tue May 06, 2008 5:14 am

Why are libertarians, especially natural-rights libertarians, so kind to tyrants? After all, if you're living under a government that continuously violates your inherent and unalienable rights, why should you go along with it? Why not make a revolution? Why not shoot the bastards?

Let's not talk specifically about the U.S., Canada, France, or England. Let's do like economists and assume a country. Imagine, for a moment, that you are living in a land ...

* where a fine net of detailed regulations controls virtually everything you do in the course of everyday life, from driving a car to hiring employees to building a house;
* where for a host of purposes you have to fill in forms and answer personal questions from bureaucrats;
* where, say, a third of what the people produce and earn is seized in taxes, and you have to file and sign periodic income reports;
* where people are conceived of as "human resources" the state can draw upon;
* where there is a very powerful permanent army;
* where the people have been disarmed;
* where you need permits to engage in many economic activities;
* where the authorities decide what you may consume and even, in some cases, read;
* where your identity is basically defined by official identification papers, and the government even issues you a number that defines you as a citizen;
* where the state circumvents the rule of law with complicated and abstruse legislation that most citizens do not know and cannot understand;
* where the majority apparently assents to all this in formal elections, but a large bureaucracy and an entrenched political class actually rule.

Obviously, you would call for, or even start, a libertarian revolution. Or would you?

Authoritarian Arguments Against Revolution

By revolution , I mean a radical, non-legal change in the relations between the governors and the governed. By libertarian , I mean that the governors would lose much of their power over the governed. In other words, I am not talking about a change achieved by a slow shift of public opinion at the polls. I am discussing a change that bypasses the existing legal order. Whether or not it involves violence, it would not be congruent with legal continuity.

Authoritarians have lots of arguments against this kind of revolution. One brand is the divine right of kings. As Robert Filmer puts it, "if this supreme power was settled and founded by God himself in the fatherhood, how is it possible for the people to have any right or title to alter and dispose of it otherwise? ... The obedience which all subjects yield to kings is but the paying of that duty which is due to the supreme fatherhood."[1]

Another authoritarian argument is the Burkean idea that loyalty is part of one's moral duties, and that "no occasion can justify [a revolution] which would not equally authorize a dispensation with any other moral duty, perhaps with all of them together."[2] And then, of course, there are the Rousseauvian and Hobbesian brands of contractarianism. The state is based on consent, but this consent has to be unconditional for the state efficiently to carry on its mission of protecting individuals. Since only the sovereign can make judgments on the means he uses for protecting his subjects, a revolution is never justifiable.

The whole Western liberal tradition dismisses such reasoning. John Locke explains that "whenever the Legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience . . ." Power then "devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty, and, by the Establishment of a new Legislative (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own Safety and Security, which is the end for which they are in Society."[3] Section 2 of the 1789 French Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen includes the "right to resist oppression" among the natural rights of man.

Even some conservative legal theorists, such as William Blackstone, admit the right of resistance and agree that, at some point, it is legitimate to exercise it:

The fifth and last auxiliary right of the subject, that I shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their defense, suitable to their condition and degree and such as allowed by law. Which is also declared by the same statute [the Bill of Rights] and it is indeed a public allowance under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and the laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.[4]

When do we cross the line? I suspect most liberal thinkers would agree it has been crossed in our imaginary country.

More here.

The Right to Smash the State-- Any time we so choose!--That right belongs to us!

The collectivists' inherent advantage over libertarians:

But even when enough people think the rebellion is in their interest, several practical issues remain. Who is to spend resources on education? Who will start the revolution? Here, what economists call the logic of collective action comes into play. A necessary revolution is a "public good," which means that everybody will profit from it even if one has not contributed to it. Furthering the revolution carries costs, not only because one has to spend resources on education, but also because anyone on the front line may be shot or arrested. A utility-maximizing individual will be inclined to free-ride, to wait for his neighbor to revolt. Consequently, no one will.

This is another way to say that personal interest -- "individualism," in de Tocqueville's pejorative sense -- may hinder a necessary revolution. There is a conflict between personal interest and the future of liberty. This is more than a theoretical curiosity: just look at the businessmen who, even when they would profit from liberty, cave in and turn the other cheek in order to placate the tyrant and save a few dollars.

Revolutions do occur from time to time, so collective action problems are not insurmountable. Entrepreneurs may find ways to tie private benefits to collective action, or to impose private costs on non-participants -- by a boycott, for example. These "selective incentives" bypass the free rider problem. And, of course, there are individuals -- revolutionary leaders -- for whom the cost of starting a revolution may be lower because they have less to lose, or who attach a higher value to their private benefits from revolutionary action.

These ways around collective action problems may be less accessible to libertarians than to collectivists. Libertarians take personal interest and political apathy very seriously -- perhaps too seriously. As a matter of philosophical principle, they don't want to be sacrificial lambs. In economic terms, the costs of revolutionary action are higher for them than for altruists. We would thus expect libertarians to be bad at organizing revolutions, even at educating the people.

On Revolution: The Right to Smash the State

On Revolution: The Right to Smash the State

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