Anarchy vs. the Right to Life

Mercurial Times ^ | February 11, 2002 | Aaron Armitage

[A.J.Armitage]

Joe Sobran, as evidenced by his recent columns, seems close to being convinced, if not already convinced, by Hans Herman Hoppe's book, Democracy: The God that Failed. As you might have guessed from the title, Hoppe thinks democracy was a bad idea, but he goes further than that; he thinks government, in any form, was a bad idea. He's an anarcho-capitalist. In an anarcho-capitalist society, instead of using police and an official court system to punish criminals, individuals would hire defense agencies, in much the same way we hire insurance agencies now. Then, if you're robbed, your agency would try to track down the guilty party, and, when they catch him, bring him to trial, probably before a judge agreed to by both your agency and his.

I don't know if Sobran realizes this, but anarcho-capitalism sits poorly with his pro-life views. The unborn, and for that matter born children, will be unable to hire an agency to protect them from their own parents or, in the case of some already born children, step-parents. It's not an accident that Murray Rothbard, the founder of anarcho-capitalism, was pro-choice. In chapter 14 of The Ethics of Liberty, he defends the legality of abortion, as indeed he had to, because if abortion is a crime and an abomination that ought to be punished - and it is - that constitutes a fatal weakness in anarcho-capitalism.

But it extends beyond abortion to child abuse and neglect. Continuing, he wrote that parents, specifically mothers, since pater incertus est, have property rights in their children because they made them. But then he pulls back, and inconsistently advocates limits on parental authority, both by ending it at adulthood and by excluding physical abuse from the things parents can do (but he does not exclude neglect). If, however, you apply the labor theory of property to human beings and not merely the non-human world, neither of these restrictions makes sense. If mothers own children the same way they would own a statue they carved or acorns they gathered, there's no logical point at which the ownership ends, not at 18, not at 21, and not when the kid moves out (Rothbard's own suggestion).

In the case of abuse, his position faces an even greater problem. Not only is his insistence that parents lack the right to "aggress against his person by mutilating, torturing, murdering him, etc." inconsistent with property rights over the children (why can't I mutilate my own property?), in an anarchist society, there's no one to enforce a prohibition against torturing or murdering one's own children.

Locke himself, the originator of the labor theory of property, did not consider children the property of their parents, and for very good reason; it would've been half way to Filmerism. What he said instead was, "The power, then, that parents have over their children, arises from that duty which is incumbent on them, to take care of their children, during the imperfect state of childhood." (Second Treatise, para. 58)

The only kinds of crimes that could be punished in a pure anarcho-capitalist scheme are ones directly harming paying customers of a defense agency. This certainly has the advantage of doing away with non-crimes like drug possession and prostitution, but, by the nature of how the system operates, it must also leave unpunished real crimes against those other than paying customers. Children, especially unborn ones, are out of luck, and they aren't the only ones. Protection of those outside the charmed circle of paying customers would be based only on charity, and it's easy to imagine pro-life agencies emerging to punish abortionists, but there would just as certainly be pro-choice agencies, and the two kinds of agencies would necessarily exist in a permanent state of war. Once you've gone beyond the model of agencies simply selling protection, there's nothing to prevent agencies from "altruistically" punishing the smoking of marijuana or, for that matter, the drinking of alcohol. An anarchist society can only be peaceful if all force-users other than purely profit-driven defense agencies are excluded and punished (which would mirror the exclusion of other force-users anarchists criticize the state for), and if they are excluded, the unborn will be left with no protection at all, and legal abortion will be more secured by the legal system than any Supreme Court ruling could ever make it, because it would be secured by the structure of the system, and not merely by a changeable rule.

[A.J.Armitage]

At long last, my column returns.

[A.J.Armitage]

.

[nickcarraway]

Besides Locke, anarcho-capitalism certainly isn't consistent with Adam Smith. (To the contrary to some Marxists)

[headsonpikes]

In my experience, reductionist analyses obscure more than they reveal.

There is a HISTORY to the relation between person and state; and history is not reducible to a simple cause/effect schema based on materialist models of the behavior of 'stuff'.

Nor is history reducible to a complex, 'plumbing of human-motivation' ideology based on some OTHER Frenchman's wacko scheme.

IMNSHO. ;^)

I could have said 'German'; I just like to tweak les Frogs. ;^)

[curmudgeonII]

A little surprizing reading about the need for governmment from you. Be that as it may, it's nice to read another of your thought-provoking articles again.

[Architect]

The only kinds of crimes that could be punished in a pure anarcho-capitalist scheme are ones directly harming paying customers of a defense agency.

Nope.

The market protects people in unexpected ways. For example, people in the Eastern Bloc drove these cruddy little cars like Trabants and Ladas because they depended (forcibly) on the government to protect them from carmakers. In the West, we drive far better quality products, precisely because we have a market. I don't know whether Ford or Firestone was at fault for the Explorer problem but you can be damn well sure that they fixed it. The market doesn't tolerate screwups. I don't have to know anything about tires to benefit from the marketplace.

WRT babies and other defenseless people, my first point would be: are they protected now? Surely the position of the Libertarian Party - return the issue to the states - is superior to that of the supposedly anti-abortion Republican Party - which is to betray their supporters. Returning the issue to the states is the first step towards establishing a free market in abortion policy.

More importantly, the market protects the defenceless too. Rothbard and Hoppe are wrong to continually talk about defence companies. They are obviously an integral part of the Natural Order but the first line of defence to wrongdoing is not hired hands. Rather it is ostracism.

If I renege on a debt to my credit card company, the company won’t normally sue me in court. Instead they will put a black mark against my name and I will find that honest merchants will cease to give me credit or to deal with me in any way with other than cash. Eventually, I will give in, right the wrong I caused, and I will be re-instated in polite society.

No government. No punishment (why do you insist on that anyway?). Just quiet resolution of the wrong inflicted and restitution thereof.

In The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard disgustingly refers to a foetus as an intruder in its mother's body and claims that she has the right to expel the intruder. Well, in some absolute sense, he is right. It is her body and she reigns supreme over it. OTOH, killing someone else because he inconveniences you is evil. Rothbard forgot the second half of the equation. The answer is not to jail her (and historically women were never jailed for murder – do you really want them to be?) but to denounce her actions as evil and humiliate her in polite company.

It would also be a good idea to denounce Rothbard for his repulsive lack of concern for the unborn.

One last point. Do you really want to trust government to protect your rights? Didn't work well for the Trabant drivers. Nor, for that matter, for the children stolen by the CPS.

[A.J.Armitage]

So what's YOUR answer, A.J.? Stengthening the State?

In relation to abortion? Yes.

By which I mean, of course, that I want it to be illegal.

[A.J.Armitage]

A little surprizing reading about the need for governmment from you. Be that as it may, it's nice to read another of your thought-provoking articles again.

I did call drug possession and prostitution non-crimes, of course, so my libertarian credentials are still good. I've always been pro-life.

And thanks for the complement.

[ex-snook]

"By which I mean, of course, that I want it to be illegal. "

Thanks AJ you have captured precisely what is needed to restore this Nation back on the path to again being the beacon of the world. Without it, to borrow a comtempory phrase, we just suck. Just like the Europeans we would be heading for oblivion. Now let's discuss something important - tax cuts anyone?

[Gelato]

It's not necessary to "strengthen the state" to provide protection to the unborn. The ability of the state to protect the rights of citizens is already there. What we're faced with is putting unborn children under this protection.

The purpose of government is to defend the equal rights of all persons, with special care to the defenseless. The writer of this article is absolutely right that abolishing government would only frustrate this and leave the weak unprotected--which would, in turn, endanger us all by creating a society of the survival of the fittest.

What we've done in our society is corrupt government--turning it from a protecting agent to an oppressive one. Certainly we don't want to see an expansion of this power; the key to protecting the unborn is to reverse the government's power back to a focus on the equal protection of rights.

[SuperLuminal]

Interesting.....nice post.

[A.J.Armitage]

The market protects people in unexpected ways. For example, people in the Eastern Bloc drove these cruddy little cars like Trabants and Ladas because they depended (forcibly) on the government to protect them from carmakers.

Wait a minute there! There's no comparison between communism and being protected from murder. You're misusing the term "protection" here.

WRT babies and other defenseless people, my first point would be: are they protected now? Surely the position of the Libertarian Party - return the issue to the states - is superior to that of the supposedly anti-abortion Republican Party - which is to betray their supporters. Returning the issue to the states is the first step towards establishing a free market in abortion policy.

Turning the issue over to the states still leaves you with a government, not anarchy. I agree about the Republican party on abortion, and certainly Roe vs. Wade needs to be overturned, which would return it to the states, but an amandment might ultimately be a good idea.

A free market in policy isn't a good idea, and anarcho-capitalism couldn't bring it about without permanent warfare. You'd have the problem of people paying agencies to punish whatever they wanted.

More importantly, the market protects the defenceless too. Rothbard and Hoppe are wrong to continually talk about defence companies. They are obviously an integral part of the Natural Order but the first line of defence to wrongdoing is not hired hands. Rather it is ostracism. If I renege on a debt to my credit card company, the company won’t normally sue me in court. Instead they will put a black mark against my name and I will find that honest merchants will cease to give me credit or to deal with me in any way with other than cash. Eventually, I will give in, right the wrong I caused, and I will be re-instated in polite society. No government. No punishment (why do you insist on that anyway?). Just quiet resolution of the wrong inflicted and restitution thereof.

That's all fine, if you're talking about credit card debt. Murder is something different.

In The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard disgustingly refers to a foetus as an intruder in its mother's body and claims that she has the right to expel the intruder. Well, in some absolute sense, he is right. It is her body and she reigns supreme over it. OTOH, killing someone else because he inconveniences you is evil. Rothbard forgot the second half of the equation. The answer is not to jail her (and historically women were never jailed for murder – do you really want them to be?) but to denounce her actions as evil and humiliate her in polite company.

I don't think Rothbard is right about that at all. If the baby intruded into her mother, at what point did the intrusion happen? At or before conception? No, she didn't exist yet. After conception? No, she's already there. The baby had no choice in the matter. The issue isn't the mother's body, it's the baby's body (and you do admit here that the baby is a person). As I said before, when it's killing someone, shunning doesn't cut it.

One last point. Do you really want to trust government to protect your rights? Didn't work well for the Trabant drivers. Nor, for that matter, for the children stolen by the CPS.

That depends on the government. The communist governments weren't trying to defend rights in the first place. They had other, evil goals. The CPS is abusive and needs to be restrained if not abolished, but being against abortion doesn't mean supporting everything alledgedly done "for the children". In fact, most people who do things "for the children" want abortion to be legal.

[A.J.Armitage]

Ok....assume you've made abortion illegal. Now, how do you proceed to prosecute your new statute?

The same way you prosecute any other statute. If evidence that it's been violated turns up, you try to find out who did it. If you catch someone, you hold a trial.

[JMJ333]

I did call drug possession and prostitution non-crimes, of course, so my libertarian credentials are still good. I've always been pro-life.

Isn't that selective morality? Abortion is immoral because the result is a violent death of an innocent and defenseless human being. Prostitution is also immoral because it reduces a person to an object, dehumanizing them at a base level. And drugs speak for themselves.

While it is true that laws have never completely stopped any action in society, this is not an acceptable excuse to legalize the action. Conversely, if making a thing legal were the answer to crime we could simply make everything legal and all crime would be brought under control.

Legalizing drugs, prostitution, or any other immoral action will not make society better, but make it worse. The legalization of such immoral acts only initially make law enforcement easier because fewer people are arrested, tried and jailed. But, eventually immorality breeds immorality without improving society.

If you want less government, then you should fight to retain what remains of our foundational culture.

[Architect]

That's all fine, if you're talking about credit card debt. Murder is something different.

I've already established that you are wrong to say that the market only protects people who have hired defense companies.

Now. Let's address the question of women who murder their unborn babies (and I concede nothing about what it is. Unlike Rothbard, I recognize that murder is murder). You tell me. What penalty do you advocate for their actions? Death?

And how do you answer Bob Lallier's objections here?

To wit:

"To violate this right of individual sovereignty opens many fearsome Pandora’s boxes. For one example, if abortion is homicide then innocent women who have suffered miscarriages can be hunted down by the state and hustled off to gynecologists and investigated as possible crime scenes...A state that can define its jurisdiction so as to include the insides of our very bodies will leave absolutely no room left for any individual humanity at all. Such a state will not be above dictating the genetic engineering of people to make them more ‘fetus friendly’ in the interest of protecting "our" little "proto-citizens." Believe me, even Catholics do not want to go there..."

[A.J.Armitage]

Isn't that selective morality? Abortion is immoral because the result is a violent death of an innocent and defenseless human being. Prostitution is also immoral because it reduces a person to an object, dehumanizing them at a base level. And drugs speak for themselves.

Do they? You can't take their immorality as a given. I certainly don't give it. I don't know about prostitution reducing a person to an object, either. What, exactly, would such a reduction consist of? I've always thought of commerce as a distinctly human activity. No, prostitution is immoral because it involves fornication.

You're right, of course, that abortion is immoral because it kills someone. It's also something else. It's a crime. There's an actual victim, the baby.

While it is true that laws have never completely stopped any action in society, this is not an acceptable excuse to legalize the action. Conversely, if making a thing legal were the answer to crime we could simply make everything legal and all crime would be brought under control.

That's not the reason to make those things legal. The reason is, they aren't crimes. Any punishment of them is itself a crime, a crime you have to fund.

Legalizing drugs, prostitution, or any other immoral action will not make society better, but make it worse.

The immoral action I'm concerned with is violating the rights of someone else. That most certainly will make society worse.

If you want less government, then you should fight to retain what remains of our foundational culture.

I can see fighting for our culture, but not, you know, fighting for our culture.