Thomas Paine and the "necessary evil"

Thomas Paine was an intellectual who live in the eighteenth century. He was born in Great Britain, but eventually he migrated to America. Besides his books, Thomas Paine was also a known pamphleteer who helped the American Revolution. He is recognized as being one of the Founding Fathers of the Great American Nation. One of the most influential pamphlets in those days was written by him; Common Sense was widely read in America and had a major roll in influencing the people who lived in the American Colonies in to demanding independence from Great Britain. He was revolutionary and a libertarian.

One of my favorites passages of the pamphlet is this:

"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing., but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities are heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer."

Policies against Violence

To be or not to be

From the moment we are born, we are already part of what we call society. If we would define society, it would be a group of people who live under the same rules, rights and obligations. During all the History, society can be defined more or less like this, even on the remotest past, when the first social relations were started.

Nowadays, to be part of a society is an unquestionable subject. We just accept this as part of normality. But it is not a so simple question as we generally think, as our conception of world. You, dear reader, have you sometime chosen if you want or not to live among our social institutions and forms?

Bakunin, one of the most important anarchist philosophers, wrote about this in his famous papers which were spread in Europe during the 19th century. He said, in clear words, that to be part of a society has to be a right, a choice, and not an obligation, a compulsory act, as it is today, not suffering any kind doubts.

Bakunin explains that when we decide to be part of a society, we are accepting its rules and obligations in both directions: ours with the collective, collective’s with us. It would work with all kind of social relations, being able to be explained with an example, such as security.

Let’s go: a society, which means a group of individuals, nothing else, can decide it will protect its members from external and internal violence. Only the rules, or law, of this society can decide what forms violence can be used by its members. Its members have to have a behavior according to its rules, and it has to protect them from all kind of physical violence. But, being to be part of this society a free choice, no people may be forced to follow those social rules, which will mean that that society will not have the obligation to defend those people from violence.

According to this, a member of this society has the right to be protected by it from violence, if respecting its rules. But this individual may be free not to want to observe those rules, which means that society will have no obligation to protect him any longer.

This argument can be extended to other social relations: Do you want to be protected from the violence by the society? Do you agree with the public education and the forms it is practiced? Are you in favor to pay for public services and companies? Do you really want to be part of all this? Could you choice it?

Finally, are you really free, or had you never thought about this?

The Utopia

Everyone who wish to seriously study the idea of anarchism begins with a simple question seldom raised on discussions: Do we really need government?

The most common answer people give is "no, no we can't". When you think about government what is the first thing that comes in your mind? In my mind, the basic task of government, and probably the main reason why people think we can't live without it, is the task of setting the "rules of the game". Rules, enforceable rules are what government imposes to every single one of us. If you don't respect the rules, you'll suffer some kind of penalty.

Most people think rules are very much necessary. If we didn't have rules enforced by some kind of authority, then chaos would exist. So, there you go. That is why people we need the State. Many philosophers, Hobbes for instance, believed that if people were let on their on, then it would be a war of everyone against everyone. The State would emerge from this chaos to put things in order.

The question we libertarians ask is simple: Is Hobbes right? Do we really always need rules that are imposed upon people? Take a conversation among friends, for instance. Is there any kind of rules there? Why is that when someone is speaking, the others tend to listen? Who establishes the time that each friend is entitle to speak? Is there a judge? The dynamic of the conversation seem to follow a path which was design by no one. There aren't any rules, yet conversation seems to occur without any problems. We find out then that we live in a world that is not made only by rules. Our world is a mixture of rules and anarchy.

Anarchy, surprisingly for some, seems to work fine in many circumstances. People seem to follow not rules, but moral codes to witch there are no enforcers, no police. Individuals who voluntary accept to follow such codes gather themselves with individuals that follow this same code. The result is order. Order emerging out of anarchy. People of the same community, who share the same moral values, will behave in and orderly fashion without any rule imposed on them, the same way friends engage in conversation or decide what movie to watch.

This blog is design to study such ideas and discuss them.

Starting

Dear reader;

We are opening now this place to debate the anarcho-capitalism, discussing the advantages of living in a free society, focused in its economic aspects, from the punkest continent of the world.

Be welcome!