do me a favor?: cut and paste this everywhere. it's a...marketing ploy. but it's sincere.

A Philosophical Challenge

My irritating yet astounding new book Against the State (SUNY Press) argues that all the arguments of the great philosophers (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Hegel, Rawls, Nozick, and Habermas, among others), are, putting it kindly, unsound.

The state rests on violence: not the consent of the governed, not utility, not rational decision-making, not justice.
 
Not only are the existing arguments for the legitimacy of state power unsound; they are shockingly fallacious, a scandal, an embarrassment to the Western intellectual tradition.

So I issue a challenge: Give a decent argument for the moral legitimacy of state power, or reconstruct one of the traditional arguments in the face of the refutations in Against the State.

If you can't, you are rationally obliged to accept anarchism.

I'd offer a huge cash prize, but I'm broke.

Henceforward, if you continue to support or observe the authority of government, you are an evil, irrational cultist.

You're an anarchist now, baby, until further notice.

e-mail responses to c.sartwell@verizon.com

Yours in anarchy,
Crispin Sartwell

you can pre-order from amazon, or actually get holt of it from suny press.

from against the state:
The attempt to justify state power ethically has made no substantial progress for centuries. Indeed, for two hundred years, philosophers have rested content with recapitulating Hegel, Locke, or Hume, or constructing collages, such as those of Rawls and Habermas. Of course, probably the best policy is to approach the monuments of the intellectual tradition in a posture of respect, with a presumption that they were produced by smart people thinking hard and so cannot be merely ridiculous. With regard to the arguments that have been offered for the legitimacy of the state, I cannot manage to assume this posture. The arguments themselves are pitiful: riddled with holes, rationalizations, dreams of submission dressed in the leering semblance of rationality.

     The arguments of a Hobbes, of a Hume, of a Rawls are, I want to say, unworthy of human beings. They are arguments that we should all submit, but they are expressions above all of the slavishness of the writer. They are justifications of slavery by slaves, and with regard to any such argument, you must question its sincerity and sample its stench of self-delusion as well as evaluate its logical quality. And whatever you may think of the motivations, the arguments are shockingly fallacious: one strives by any means to justify the central moral fact of one's life: one's destruction as an autonomous human being; one's pervasive use for the purposes of others, one's tininess, impotence, and one's collusion in this tininess and impotence: one's need for it, love of it. One is an insect, by choice, by commitment, by history, by necessity, though hardly by philosophy. And when it comes time to argue, one argues as an insect would argue. One philosophizes like a gnat.

     "Locke," "Rousseau," "Hegel," "Habermas" are sounds that reverberate through human history like the tolling of great big bells. They have their moments: Locke's epistemology, Rousseau's philosophy of education, the very idea of the philosophy of history, the lovely dancing delight that is the prose style of Jurgen Habermas. But their books are also all contained within the still-emerging world-historical destiny of the state, not to speak of its patronage systems and threats of repression. There may be better justifications of the existence of the state than they came up with, but any candidate had better start more skeptically, by feeling actually threatened, undermined, by anarchism. And so we anarchists must do all we can to destroy their arguments and any others that may eventually be put forward. Only thus can we serve the cause to which we are all, ultimately, committed: the destruction of human moral autonomy.

Comments

[GG]

Since the state has no legitimacy, and you are therefore "rationally obliged" to accept anarchism, how exactly do you justify making use of a state university to publish your book?

[Pacific poker]

Thank you for sharing this really interesting article

[mirc]

That said there are many, many practical examples of governments protecting rights and fulfilling exactly what I said above, and on a daily basis. If you want to let practical example be your guide, do as Greg suggests above and then see what your options are as soon as a few people in your group decide they want something of yours and then walk in and take it from you
thanks a lot..

[mirc]

Because government has been the only thing we've known, we automatically and blindly defend it on a basis that has no reality....

[amasra]

thanks for text...

[solariz]

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[berk]

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[Adam]

Well, I tried to e-mail you my response, but the e-mail got bounced. So here it is:

http://sophistpundit.blogspot.com/2008/06/frivolous-anarchist.html

[Adam]

Not interested?

[Adam]

anarchists have to live with a bad conscience, or at least i've not chosen to go off-grid.

Ok, it's one thing to be pragmatic and say that things aren't the way you'd like them to be, but you'll work to change them as best you can. But you went well beyond that point. You stated that in the absence of a formal justification of state legitimacy, people are "rationally obliged" to become anarchists.

I suppose it's possible you just meant that they're obliged to agree with you that the state is a bad thing, but that's sort of a worthless conclusion, don't you think? Do you believe that supporting the state is immoral, or don't you? And if you do, aren't you being more than a hypocrite; aren't you actually being knowingly immoral? Moreover, you aren't just being a law-abiding citizen who doesn't believe in state laws; you are actively benefiting from the apparatus of the state through the publication of your book.

Calling it "a problem" is simply a cop-out. You can choose to not get your book published through SUNY; though I suppose at this point it's already put out a fair number of them. If you had the courage of your convictions, you would at the very least stop any further production through this state-sponsored medium.

All of this is merely a side-story to what I believe is the fundamental error in your reasoning.

Let's try putting you to your own test. You asked for a justification for the moral legitimacy of state power.

Well, let me ask you for a justification of the moral legitimacy of property rights. Remember, if you can't, you are "rationally obliged" to become an opponent of property rights, by the logic of your challenge.

[crispy]

yeah well the state press is a problem. but as i say in the book it's kind of hard to maintain your anarchist purity: even driving on the roads is making use of the state. can't eat a burger that hasn't been regulated and inspected by the state. anarchists have to live with a bad conscience, or at least i've not chosen to go off-grid. i even pay my taxes and shit; that's hard to avoid! so i'm like financing guantanamo. i got no pleas except to try to be honest about the extent of my hypocrisy.

[Adam]

Since the state has no legitimacy, and you are therefore "rationally obliged" to accept anarchism, how exactly do you justify making use of a state university to publish your book?

Incidentally, while I don't know whether I'm "evil" or a "cultist", I have no problem whatsoever with being branded as irrational. I have little patience for rationalism: http://sophistpundit.blogspot.com/2007/12/revolt-against-reason.html

I'd be happy to pursue that discussion in more detail, if you are interested.

[Lamya]

If we're going to talk about how "sometimes" the government actually does what it was supposedly made to do (protect rights and maintain peace) then we should measure the percentage of let's say how many times the police stops someone from taking what's yours and how many times the government causes the death of its citizens by starting random wars. So basically, the situation with giving legitimacy to the government is like choosing to take a pill that cures warts but causes cancer.

[David]

Lamya, practical examples are irrelevant to the challenge, which is to extend a rational basis for the existence of governmental power. That said there are many, many practical examples of governments protecting rights and fulfilling exactly what I said above, and on a daily basis. If you want to let practical example be your guide, do as Greg suggests above and then see what your options are as soon as a few people in your group decide they want something of yours and then walk in and take it from you. Having no common authority to which to appeal, you'll have no recourse whatsoever.

[Adam Ricketson]

This book sounds interesting. I think I've come to similar conclusions over the past few years (though I don't know your arguments and I'm not an expert in the ideas of professional political philosophers).

My main gripe with the popular arguments for the state is that they make false assumptions about the state--specifically that the state is "of, for, and by the people". This is flat out wrong. Both the structure of the state and the history of the state show that it's purpose is to allow one segment of society to dominate the rest of society...there is nothing that requires it to act in the interests of the general membership of that society (elections only provide a little bit of accountability).

I'm of the opinion that political philosophers were largely just rationalizing an institution that they couldn't imagine living without. Even to the extent that I reject the justifications of the state, I'm still influenced by the conservative argument that we shouldn't dispense with central social institutions unless the situation gets unbearable.

However, this rejection of the state will affect how I feel about the various reforms that are always being proposed.

[Lamya]

David, how many governments have actually protected the rights and peacefully resolved disputes? Governments have always caused more damage and opression that peace and protection of rights, and you can visit any history book (or merely your memory) to see that this is true. Because government has been the only thing we've known, we automatically and blindly defend it on a basis that has no reality. I would agree with you if I hadn't seen that most of the world's problems are caused by governments (wars, poverty, oppression, etc) and yet we still defend them..which is really a paradox.

[Greg]

By all means, feel free to set up an anarcho-libertarian state somewhere as an empirical test of whether it works. Just please don't do it here because I don't want to have to deal with the consequences. I must admit that I'm not that familiar with the arguments of Locke, et al, but apart from that, I tend to view utopian libertarian arguments as similar to statist fantasies like Bellamy's Looking Backward. Sure, it sounds good if you're in high school and stoned. But personally, I'm fairly convinced that a state is better for people's welfare overall. I also question whether a functioning anarchy is possible. Transaction costs justify the existence of the firm. I'd wager they justify, in a utilitarian, economic sense, the state as well.

[David]

The rational purpose for the legitimacy of government is the protection of rights and peaceful, binding dispute resolution.

I don't accept that Enlightenment arguments for government are unsound merely because you say so.

[mr.fun]

LOL

how useful.

LOL

this made my day, thanks.

[crispy]

well the idea is that we anarchists are doing a favor to statists, who are committed to the destruction &c, by forcing them to clean up their pathetic arguments. so we're all on the same side!

[Bernard]

"Only thus can we serve the cause to which we are all, ultimately, committed: the destruction of human moral autonomy." Wtf?