I have a long review essay of Michael Huemer’s The Problem of Political Authority. I conclude:
I believe that Michael Huemer has put his finger on an important question, namely: What justifies having an institution with special privileges to coerce and to which we have special obligations to obey? The explicit justifications given in the literature of political philosophy are not very satisfying. One’s views on the issue ought to be tied to one’s views on human nature. Unfortunately, readers are likely to have difficulty buying in to Huemer’s own views on human nature, and I believe that this will limit the persuasiveness of his arguments.
Thanks for another inspiring article which triggered these fleeting thoughts with me.
My hypothesis is: much inadequate reasoning about the state, especially among anarchist-leaning libertarians (a-l-l-) is due to a fundamental error of approach. Fatally, pre-eminence is given to normative arguments, at the expense of a level-headed analysis of facts and endeavours to first establish a realistic, unprepossessed positive theory of the state.
States are not built the way stringent moral theories are – not that anarchist-leaning libertarians (a-l-l) seem to be awfully good at such theories.
If you want to understand what is good and what is bad about states you must have an open mind to register the way they have evolved and are developing. It is no good starting a theory of the state with maximal moral demands.
This is the fundamental handicap of a-l-l. They get distracted and worked up about figments of their own moral reasoning before they begin to come to grips with the positive reality of the state.
If you keep your mind open to the way in which states are continuously shaped you will discover a lot of surprising aspects that the a-l-l are dogmatically disabled to perceive. For instance that next to other, potentially competing elements of its utility function, it is perfectly rational for the state to foster wealth and freedom, personal liberty, property rights/ institutions of liberty.
Unfortunately, a-l-l- seem to have become the dominant force of libertarianism, while I increasingly believe that a-l-l- are not really concerned with the (hiighly intricate, very difficult, and less than clear-cut) conditions and possibilities of liberty but with the confirmation of the preferences that they use as the fundamental assumptions in their theory of the state, which inclination seems tantamount to a self-righteous, unconditional hatred of “the state”. They seem, I am afraid, to be all about an affective proclivity, rather than an open-ended research programme suitable to establish better chances for liberty.
It is difficult to assess from your brief comment about a realistic view of “The State,” but there is a wider view available in reading
“The History of Government From The Earliest Times” by S. E. Finer (Oxford 1997 5 Books, 3 Vols); particularly Book 5.
Richard,
Thanks for drawing my attention to Finer’s work. I have extensively consulted Michael Mann’s “The Sources of Social Power,” which I find very useful. A longtime admirer of Douglas C. North, for the purposes of my own research, I draw heavily on his seminal work. Having developed my own ideas, I did find Mancur Olson congenial in many respects, as well as Itai Sened’s “The Political Institutions of Private Property.”
Reading into this work, what I note missing, even in the section on “The Authority of Democracy” (pp. 59 et seq.) is a disquistion on “representation.”
That is, the fable or myth of Republics to be forms of authority deriving such authority from the delegation of powers to representatives.” A bit different from the simplified concept of individual participation in a democratic (group decision) process.
Perhaps I am blinded by my conviction that “Democracy” is a process, not a condition – despite the fact that the label is given to the conditions necessary to the process.
A very insightful and thought-provoking book review; thank you!
I think you have fingered the problem with Heumer’s book, which is that his commonsensically-moral humans are just strawmen. The roots of human behavior lie in biology and Heumer neglects sociobiology (evolutionary psychology). He applies a mathematical method of reasoning from a certain set of axioms about human behavior or morals, but his axioms are incomplete.
Just for example, from Huemer you quote: “the risks of attacking your neighbors will normally greatly outweigh the potential benefits.” Well, that is nonsense. In very many cases the benefits will outweigh the risks from an evolutionary point of view. Natural selection cares about relative achievement, not absolute achievement, which contributes (I omit a lengthy argument here) to the fact humans have evolved to function (much of the time) in hierarchical societies. Scaled up to any degree a hierarchy is the backbone of the State. We find some State nearly everywhere we find a lot of humans because always some humans will rationally (or irrationally, due to optimism favored by natural selection) apply force to obtain power, and other humans will submit to avoid immediate violence (then perhaps attempt to climb the hierarchy, or rebel to invert it if the odds look good).
So long as humans are social animals they find some way to coordinate their behaviour in groups; that scheme will involve persuasion and/or a hierarchy of coercion since no individual can personally coerce all the other members of a group 24/7; evolution will favor humans who can both command and obey; power-seekers (virtually guaranteed to exist under natural selection) will combine persuasion with coercion and trouble-dodgers will go along to get along; and we will recognize the State as the reification of the inevitable coordinating scheme.
NB: there is still an awful lot of room to argue about the powers, duties, size, and organization of the State(s). Human nature is pretty flexible and people arguably thrive more under small (in scope, not necessarily population) states than big ones. The big problem is an old problem: no matter how small your State, the people who run it will invariably try to make it bigger (in obedience to Parkinson’s Law if for no other reason). If you start out with no State at all, some power-seeker will recruit a few henchmen and impose a (bandit) State. You will prevent that only at the cost of establishing a rival (hopefully anti-bandit) State. But the serpent is in the Garden then– nolens-volens you shall have a State, and it will start to grow.
What we need from a moral philosopher is not an irrelevant argument from flawed premises that the State is unnecessary, but a moral system under which our inevitable State(s) will be confined to the minimum size. This moral system should be appealing and persuasive to channel the energies of power seekers and guide those who are always ready to apply coercion away from empire-building. Among other things, it must (functionally) specify when power-hungry people should be killed or exiled and justify those who carry out that chore.
Moral prescriptions which neglect group dynamics are utopian and interesting only as hypothetical limiting cases, not as practical proposals.
P.S. A small point. You repeated the Weberian formula about the State’s monopoly of force. I realize that statists have insinuated that formula into nearly all modern academic writing, but it never was and still isn’t true in most societies, including ours, nor is it desirable according to American political theory. For example, American individuals may morally use force in self-defense, whether or not an agent of the State is present to approve or apply said force. Even if you were to write that the State invariably has a monopoly of the “legitimate initiation of force” or some such, that would still be descriptively wrong and philosophically arguable. Like many other people I reject that vision of the State, which I regard as a sort of Socialist vision and deeply flawed. That vision certainly is not necessary, because, for example, the English State operated for centuries without claiming any monopoly on force (unless you want to get into a turtles-all-the-way-down argument about feudalism). The State will claim greater power to use force than an individual, but doesn’t strictly need any monopoly.
Ghost of Christmas Past,
Thank you for your comment, which I found most valuable. Of course, I am prejudiced in that I find what you write sensible and rather congenial to my way of thinking. It is just such a rare experience (for me) to find people who seem to have done some serious research in the matter and come to similar conclusions.
Highly interesting thinking about “monopoly of coercion”, thanks for inspiring me.