[T]he self-described “anarcho-capitalist” made a name for himself by excoriating right-wing politicians for their moderation and quoting obscure paleolibertarians.… Discounting the possibility that ten million Argentines made a midnight conversion to free-market fundamentalism, explanations tend to focus on the fact that Milei’s rebellious image struck a chord with an increasingly disillusioned electorate.…[the] two-party system is coming undone, insists Pryluka, under the weight of decades of inflation and economic stagnation.
If government is the problem, anarchy is certainly a solution. Combining it with free markets may prove difficult, as governments are usually thought to have a key role in protecting property and enforcing contracts. Whether the coercion can be done without is a question with which I am also keenly interested.
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You can protect private enterprise privately. The East India Company, among others, maintained a pretty significant armed forces IIRC.
Anarchy in Argentina? Hell, yes!
I worked in Argentina during the times of "plata dulce" (sweet silver) during the military regime. The economy was propped up by borrowing dollars, until the lending stopped. My perception is that there is a very strong anarchic strain in Argentine culture. By this I mean that rules will be followed only when convenient. If not convenient, anything goes.
A cultural icon in Argentina is the vivo. The standard meaning of vivo is bright, clever, lively. In Argentina, a vivo is someone who lives by his wits, If in the process the vivo breaks some laws, some rules of ethics, engages in some flim-flam, that's just a vivo being a vivo. As long as the vivo comes up on top, so much the better.
In business, such as that practiced by our Argentine partner, contracts were seen as just a piece of paper, not something to bind you. Sounds like a vivo to me. (A childhood friend who has had years of business dealings in Argentina, and is married to an Argentine, agrees with my assessment about contracts being a piece of paper in Argentina.) Cutting corners.
During the Dirty War, both the guerrilla left and the gorila military partook of the vivo ethos. V.S. Naipaul, in a 1972 article in the New York Review, well before the Dirty War got really dirty, interviewed some leftists. Quoth a leftist attorney: "There's good torture and bad torture." Cutting corners; rather vivo. And the military's approach to the Dirty War: cutting corners and vivos to the nth. Such as killing everyone in a captured leftist's address book, instead of doing the slogging detective work to investigate those persons in the address book. Torture. Another example of the vivo cutting corners.
If you define anarchy as "anything goes," anarchy and Argentina go together like Argentina and soccer, yerba mate, or beefsteak.
Well, is the goal to do w/o government, or w/o coercion. Private coercion is still coercion.
You know, Gringo, I always like it when you drop in to tell stories. You’d be welcome to post here if you wanted.
"...is the goal to do w/o government, or w/o coercion. Private coercion is still coercion."
The goal is to do without government, which is characterized by coercion. One of the potential problems associated with that is that private coercion becomes potentially more dangerous: you might have to deal with invasions, pirates, raiders, bandits, mafia organizations, and so forth. I have proposed that there is a chance that a distributed capacity for force among a populace, coupled with a commitment to keeping each other free (from such threats, but also in other ways) might be adequate to that.
The East India Company doesn't strike me as a good counter-example because it's at best a deputy of the government authorized to use government powers in the interests (and even the name of) the government. Even a less-coercive private organization acting in a deputized fashion would be objectionable: say Facebook, censoring 1st Amendment rights at the government's suggestion is acting as an arm of the government even if it is nominally private.
The goal is to do without government, which is characterized by coercion.
Interesting. My answer would be to do without coercion altogether. Who cares if there is a government if is has no coercive power?
But, if you are defining government as coercive in nature, which is fair, what about private coercion? Isn't that just as wicked?
Alternatively, without a formal government, wouldn't any community action take on the aspect of de facto government? Locke's idea was that the people delegate power to the government, so if the people exercise that power themselves, aren't the people themselves acting as a direct government?
I reason that it is impossible to do away with private coercion, because of human nature. The only argument for government -- according, at least, to the Declaration of Independence -- is that it can secure the rights of human beings, such as by defending a space in the world from tyrants, conquerors, bandits, and others who would use coercion in ways that violate those rights.
What I'm curious about is whether or not we can do the things we want to do without a government. I don't think we can change human nature. Eliminating government, which is man-made, could possibly be done. Eliminating part of human nature probably can't be, and I would be suspicious of anyone who wanted to meddle with humanity's basic nature in that way (see Serenity for example).
Yes, when I wrote about getting rid of coercion altogether I was thinking of immoral coercion. That was sloppy. My point was rather that, when it comes to immoral or unjust coercion, I don't see a difference between whether a government or a private entity is doing it. As I see it, the injustice is in the unjust coercion and not who does it.
That said, the use of force can be just and moral, and I agree that it would be impossible to get rid of coercion altogether. After all, self-defense is coercive, and a fundamental human right.
It is an interesting question whether government itself is part of human nature, and so whether in trying to eliminate government one might be playing with human nature. Humans are social and political animals, and so having some form of government might be part of who we are. I don't know.
Along that line, do you have any historical examples for what you have in mind?
Aristotle makes the argument for humanity being political by nature at the beginning of the politics, but you've already answered it adequately: "...without a formal government, wouldn't any community action take on the aspect of de facto government? Locke's idea was that the people delegate power to the government, so if the people exercise that power themselves, aren't the people themselves acting as a direct government?" That's one of those places where Aristotle himself would say something like, "In a way; but in another way..."
In a way, a volunteer fire department would be 'like' the government even in the absence of a formal government. In another way, since it couldn't tax people, arrest people, or otherwise coerce them, and since no one was paid to do it, it would be characteristically different from a professional government. The community coming together to achieve ends (like fighting fires) is what Aristotle's talking about in Politics 1, so that more than one family is able to join together to pursue goals. You need that; but do you need it to be a government, or would a community's agreement serve?
The best historic example is Iceland in the saga and medieval period, because it's reasonably well documented. But there are plenty of others; the pirate republic in the Caribbean, or any number of frontier settlements that eventually 'grew' governments in order to join the United States but originally were just trading encampments where people would come together. Teton Valley, I recently learned, was at first occupied by French fur traders who crossed the Tetons and found it. (The Pierre le Grand who settled "Pierre's Hole" was not the famous pirate, nor of course the French opera).
There's an argument, similar to the one AVI raised before, that at some level of complexity/population density/diversity things become too violent, distrustful, or complicated and 'someone just has to be in charge.' But maybe not.
What might be of greater concern is the higher level functions that Aristotle was hoping politics would address: for example, teaching philosophy and supporting philosophers who could engage in the vita contemplativa. Yet I think it may be true that an active life is also necessary for useful philosophy; the philosophers I know who don't actively participate in things do not generate many useful ideas.
Thanks for your answers. Could you suggest readings for the historical communities? If not, I can look them up, of course.
Just a thought, but maybe building a common body of background knowledge for the discussion would be useful. A post that gave links or reading suggestions could be good, if you have time. Just something to get us all on the same page and give some historical examples for our imaginations to work with.
The urban/rural difference is a puzzle for me. I've heard the social explanations, but haven't thought about them enough to know whether I think they're good or not. Whether that divide can be bridged and similar political values accepted by both cultures is an interesting question, even outside this anarchist project.
That might be a major undertaking; it really sounds like I should write a book about it, compiling research and analysis. I definitely don't have time to do that right now.
You might try focusing on just the Icelandic angle for now. Here's an introductory article:
https://www.worldhistory.org/Icelandic_Government/
As it explains, the "Icelandic free state" (sometimes called "the Icelandic Commonwealth") was in some ways a freely-organized society with some state-like features; but in other ways, arguably just a stateless society.
Sorry to be late w/ a reply you probably won't come back for (since this is already off the main page), but thank you! I'll read up on it.
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