sourceType:: book author:: Michael Malice sourcePublication:: The Anarchist Handbook ref:: noteTitle:: The Anarchist Handbook, Michael Malice (book, essay compilation)
The Anarchist Handbook, Michael Malice (book, essay compilation)
Chapter 1: Hoch die Anarchie!
In one sense, Anarchism is the belief that the imposition of authority is illegitimate.
The anarchism counter-arguments that a small-scale anarchist community would promptly be invaded by another government embeds a fundamentally anarchist view of government: that it is invasive and predatory.
Anarchism is a relationship in which no party has authority over any other.
All nations are in an anarchistic relationship to one another. There is no nations-nation that has authority over all of them.
Chapter 20: Anatomy of the State; Murray Rothbard
The State is not “Us”. “We” are not the government
The State is not “Us”. If that were true, then anything that the government does to an individual would be considered “voluntary”. Death penalties would be deemed suicides.
If 80% of the people decided to execute 20%, that would still be murder.
The State is the entity which has a monopoly on force in a given territory. The State is the only institution that acquires its resources not by exchange, but by coercion. While other agents use peaceful exchange of goods and services, the State operates by means of compulsion (enforced by aforementioned monopoly on violence).
Man’s natural state re: production and survival
Born naked and poor. Uses investments of his mind and effort - Production - on natural Resources to create items and locations which will satisfy his wants and advance his quality of life. Man can optionally Exchange these products with others, multiplying the benefit of all tremendously (probably thanks to specialization and differentiation in inherit ability and positional luck of various individuals variation-between-individuals-is-required-for-societal-success).
Only by peacefully exchanging goods and services and multiplying/modifying the natural resources can man avoid fighting over scare resources in a zero-sum scenario.
programming-and-knowledge-work-is-pure-intellectual-labor
Economic vs Political means to wealth
The above scenario is called the “Economic Means” to wealth (coined by Franz Oppenheimer).
The alternative is called the “Political Means”. Namely, confiscation, theft and seizure by use of force and threat. This route doesn’t require productivity nor expenditure of one’s own energy or resources (aside from the maintenance of the means of violence).
These two strategies are mutually exclusive.
Eventually, the political, extractive means would “run the well dry” unless its victims continued producing. In this setup, though, the incentive for the victim is a diminishing one. He has no incentive to produce beyond his own needs (lest it be taken anyway).
See also: enslavement-only-works-with-at-least-a-minimum-of-incentive
What the State is
The State, then, is The Organization of the Political Means.
Since production must always precede predation, the #free-market is the antecedent to the state. A State comes along and sets up shop in a territory that already has a viable economy.
It is impossible to imagine a brand new state opening up in a void of market economy and creating an economy itself. It’s always the other way around.
GPT summary of Rothbard:
The Anarchist Handbook by Michael Malice is a compilation of various essays on anarchism. In Chapter 1, Malice outlines the concept of anarchism as a belief in the illegitimacy of imposed authority and the idea that no party should have authority over another. He also defines a state as an entity which has a monopoly on force within a territory and operates through coercion rather than peaceful exchange.
In Chapter 20, Murray Rothbard argues that the state is not us; if it were, all governmental actions would be deemed voluntary, which is clearly not the case. He outlines two means to wealth: economic means which involve production and exchange based on effort and resources, and political means which involve confiscation or theft through force or threat. Rothbard concludes by defining the state as “the organization of the political means”, highlighting that it can only exist in territories with existing economies because production must always precede predation.