If you’ve ever taken a political philosophy course, you know that the basis for all of government is (supposedly) something called the “social contract.” The details of the theory change depending on which philosopher you happen to be reading (Mill, Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke etc…) but the basic concept is as follows: a stateless world is no fun at all. Life in ‘nature’ is “nasty brutish and short”. War is perpetual, and constant insecurity makes economic, scientific and cultural progress impossible. The way out of this is to surrender a portion of ones freedom to a common power that maintains law and order. The association is voluntary, rational, and for both the common and individual good. The social contract is an implicit pledge to obey the laws of the state.
This is a nice story. It makes us feel good about government. It contains some elements of truth, the most important of which is that the state of nature is far more violent than life within a state. But the notion of a contract, which implies voluntary, intentional action by people with a specific goal in mind, is historical fiction.
As the pioneering work of the late Charles Tilly shows: The forerunners of the first “nation-states” in Europe were warlords. They were power seeking, money seeking rules that sought only to expand their own power and control. To that end, and partially because Europe is a pretty tight space with a lot of people, competition for territory was intense and war common. Everyday people, businesses, merchants etc.. were caught in the middle. Warlords are predators, pirates. In early modern Europe, they sought territorial control in order to extract revenue from populations: to loot the earnings of private citizens for the purpose of war. Many of the institutions of modern government emerged from war making and the needs of taxation: policing (the first of which were tax collectors), public infrastructure, public education, indeed the entire concept of the ‘nation’. These things were not intentionally designed, but were unintentional outcomes of bargains between rulers, people, and merchants in the context of the demands of war, and the efficiencies of tax collection. We see it now as the dominant mode of political organization because there was a powerful mechanism of selection: war. Non-state units were slowly conquered, annexed, or otherwise absorbed into the state which eventually become the main way in which violence was organized (a state is, according to the famous sociologist, Max Weber, an organization with a ‘monopoly on violence.’).
Thus, we take the state for granted as the final form of political association. But let us keep in mind that it arose only through strength of arm over the less-efficient war-making institutions. Viewed in this way, the state is a basically a protection racket that grows through the exercise of coercion. There are many good reasons to oppose war, but another one, from a libertarian point of view is that: War makes governments grow. Not to say that there is are no good wars, but only to recognize that war usually limits the liberties of people in aggressor countries as well as those that actually suffer directly from the activities of war. As a result of war we have: the income tax; the U.S. healthcare system; the department of homeland security etc.. As Tilly pointed out, war has a ratchet effect on government size. Government rarely shrinks: new revenue usually produces new functions, which in turn breed their own clients, and become self-perpetuating entities. And though inertia is the force, war is the engine.
Classical liberalism long holds that decentralizing political and economic power within states is the most effective way in which to limit the power of governments to wage war. While democracies never war with one another, a plethora of new research shows that states that protect private property, and promote competitive markets both internationally and domestically are at far reduced risk of war with each other, and even with “big-government” states. The reason is simple: governments that own vast public resources, and that are supported by protectionist and mercantilist coalitions can more easily survive the costs of war than can governments that do not have their hands in the private sector.
The social contract theory of the state promotes the nation-state as an agent of peace. But it is more properly seen as an organization of war. The idea that we need to the state in its current form for progress is absolute nonsense. Protection of property, yes, but trade and commerce predate the state, and continue despite its encroachments. In a stunning article to this effect, GMU’s Peter Lessen shows that Somalia’s stateless, wartorn anarchy actually preforms better, economically, than did its dictatorship.
Ultimately, the only hope for liberty is to reign in the power of the state, reign in the power of state leaders, politicians. While some libertarians are at work upon radical alternatives: sea steading, charter cities, competitive government, we should not give up on the idea of a minimal state that has as its goal the protection of human freedom. There is no social contract. The state is not a voluntary association but a historical reality. The pragmatic must accept this, and do our best to encourage reform.
Very interesting.
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