Political Philosophy and Ethics discussion

This topic is being created for a discussion of Bob Hanna’s political philosophy generally and specifically regarding anarcho-socialism. Bob has asked me to reference this essay in the initial post.

As I have been (and will be in the near future) preoccupied with my book projects on free will and ethics, I have not been able to read Bob’s political philosophy writings in any depth. Accordingly, I have no idea at this time whether, or to what extent, I agree with his political philosophy.

I read the essay in its entirety, but did not take notes because it did not occur to me when I started reading. That would have been better, because it would allow me to respond at length to Bob's argument.

I do not like authority, either in personal, religious, or political form, but I accept it as necessary to practical living. What Bob refers to as "philosophical anarchism" is actually quite plausible, but I do not believe that his calls for a devolutionary transformation of the political status quo to be possible or even desirable. However, to echo some sentiments from the essay, I try to be a principled, authentic person in my personal life, and to that end I avoid all forms of bureaucratic or personal power over others. So even though I am career-oriented, I never want to be a manger. My approach to parenting will probably not be totally anti-authoritarian, however, because I believe that one must be authoritarian to be an effective parent, at least when children are younger.

Bob is right to call my respect for the state a kind of mirage or illusion that cannot be defended rationally. However, I think it is important to follow the law, even when it is inconvenient and perhaps even when it is immoral. I think disobeying immoral laws is defensible morally, and is perhaps even morally necessary. So the picture I am painting of myself is not good for my philosophical consistency. But I cannot shake the hold over myself not only of what Bob refers to as the illusion of political authority, but also what he describes as its unfounded moral claim that we comply to its laws. In a similarly telling way, when I hear coworkers saying something racist or sexist, I do not rise to the occasion in a principled defense of what I really believe.

So when I say I am principled and authentic, perhaps what I really mean is spineless, albeit in an impractical way. I think I am pretty consistent about that.

Many thanks! for that follow-up Allen.

I completely agree that it's extremely difficult to liberate ourselves & others from the cognitive illusion of the necessity & inevitability of States, & in particular to liberate ourselves & others from the Hobbesian or neo-Hobbesian liberal belief that because people are essentially egoistic & mutually antagonistic, we need States to protect us from each other, because otherwise we'll necessarily & inevitably descend into a war of all against all, & life will be nasty, brutish, & short (aka "the state of nature").

And in my book about anarcho-socialism--

https://www.academia.edu/36359665/The...

I discuss various strategies for cognitive liberation from that illusory belief.

And here's a short-ish essay, "Statism, Capitalism, & Beyond," that approaches the same set of issues from a slightly different angle, namely, the origins of the earliest States, & the relation between the (I think illusory) belief in the necessity & inevitability of States, & (equally, I think, illusory) belief in the necessity & inevitability of "big" or corporate capitalism --

https://www.academia.edu/39591836/Sta...

Mighty radical stuff, I have to say. Today's world might not last the 200 million years needed to bring about such a change of perspective!

Robert wrote: "Many thanks! for that follow-up Allen.

I completely agree that it's extremely difficult to liberate ourselves & others from the cognitive illusion of the necessity & inevitability of States, & in ..."

Thank you Robert. I had already added your book Kant, Agnosticism, and Anarchism to my to-read list, although I had not realized it was available for free online.

While I don't anticipate my statist sympathies to fall that easily, I am reminded of a coworker who I have been talking to about politics lately. He is a Hindu nationalist that believes in the BJP's anti-corruption message (although not the religious aspects,) and regards Trump as a strong, if corrupt leader. His comments about Sanders had been skeptical and dismissive. One morning, he arrived in the office to tell me about how fantastic he thinks Sanders is, that he's just the most honest and decent guy there is. While I have heard Sanders speak and find him to be an effective communicator, I am rather skeptical my coworker had a sudden change of heart because of something that Sanders said. Rather, I think it is because my coworker's wife, whom he recently married, works at Google and is (probably) politically liberal.

It's actually a very hopeful message! Man changes political allegiances after meeting his wife. Maybe there is hope for me too.

Many thanks! for those follow-ups, Feliks & Allen.

I think it's a perfect expression of the cognitive illusion I'm talking about when it feels in your bones & the pit of your stomach like the belief in the State & the (neo)Hobbesian liberal assumptions that lie behind that belief, would take 200 million years to change, & when the very thought that the State could be devolved, exited, & changed by us into a fundamentally better form of human social organization induces a kind of moral vertigo & involuntary panic.

The essence of the State is that it’s a form of social organization, with territorial boundaries, that’s both authoritarian and also coercive with respect to its government, i.e., its ruling class.

In fact, States & other State-like institutions (proto-States, quasi-States, etc.) have been in existence only 5300 years.

But anthropological evidence shows that human beings lived in various kinds of non-State social organizations for 4000 years before the earliest States, & also that, once the earliest States emerged, (i) mortality rates went up drastically due to disease, & (ii) slavery, warfare, & authoritarian coercion, not to mention poverty, were fully institutionalized & systematized.

And of course corporate capitalism has been in existence only since the beginning of the early modern era, roughly 400 years.

So neither the State nor corporate capitalism is naturally necessary or historically inevitable for human beings, nor is it in any way obvious that the State condition or the corporate capitalist condition is better for us than the non-State condition: on the contrary.

As regards Statism, e.g., psychological phenomena like the results of the famous Milgram experiment, & Stockholm syndrome--not to mention the history of Nazi Germany & other totalitarian States like Stalin's Russia--clearly show that complicity with, collaborating with, &/or unquestioning obedience to coercive authority is a pathology at the very least, & near-satanically evil on a catastrophic, monstrous scale at its worst.

Anarcho-socialism says that our social institutions shouldn't be based on coercive authoritarianism, but should instead be based on (i) universal respect for human dignity, (ii) voluntary association, (iii) mutual aid, (iv) the creative development of individuals, & (v) individual & collective autonomy.

On a very small scale, a social institution like this reading & discussion group is an excellent example of anarcho-socialist principles in action, without our actually calling it that.

And Doctors Without Borders/Medecins San Frontieres aka MSF, is an excellent example on a larger scale.

Therefore, the very fact of the actual existence of many such small-scale social institutions like this Goodreads group, not to mention the example of Allen's co-worker & his wife, & the recent emergence & increasing popularity of democratic socialism in the USA, not to mention some larger social institutions like MSF, should give us good reason to chip away at the cognitive illusion of the necessity & inevitability of the State & corporate capitalism, & also give us some rational hope.

Correspondingly, if you're interested, Philosophy Without Borders ran a ten-part series on the historical & conceptual foundations of anarcho-socialism & democratic socialism during 2018, on Against Professional Philosophy, here--

https://againstprofphil.org/2018/12/1...

Yes, I understand everything you are saying Robert (although perhaps not at the level you do) and if you don't mind, I would like to make an analogy. The state's relation to its citizens is analogous to a father over his children. One might argue that if a father behaves tyrannically and immorally to his children, the children owe nothing to the father. Certainly, I think most (philosophical) liberals would agree with something like that - that the state's right to rule is contingent on political legitimacy, which is ultimately founded on adherence to a moral standard. Or, that a wife should be able to get a divorce if she is mistreated. If a wife's obedience to her husband is silently enforced by the threat of physical violence, we would retract in horror at the arrangement's inhumanity.

However, I was taught to show gratitude to those to whom I owe something. You are right to call it a mirage or an illusion to think we owe anything to people just because we have met them or otherwise have history with them. However, the state is not necessarily an entity to which I have to conceive a vertical relationship to - I can see it as an actor to which I am simply constantly in dialogue with. And my attitude towards this constant dialogue is that so long as the state has political legitimacy, I am obligated to follow its laws, even if in individual instances its representatives have acted immorally. Why I feel this way is completely due to my upbringing, and not because I have justified how I feel through rational argument. However, I do respect people who display civil disobedience in a principled way. Their example suggests to me that I choose to follow the rules, not out of a deeper moral conviction, but out of a desire to play it safe. Hence my admiration for those who act otherwise. And the logical conclusion for those who do act in such a way is to ask, "Why should we have a state at all if we don't need one?" So your work makes an insightful point.

The coworker I mentioned in my previous post believes that society will head towards a condition where all governance is not managed by human beings but by software and artificial intelligence. He thinks the devolution of the state - at least, as controlled by human beings - is inevitable when people realize that they would rather put an algorithm in charge that has a level of total transparency that a human being does not. Even though it sounds like science fiction to me, it is not so implausible. I am not sure if a government that imposed on its citizenry using robots would be any less coercive than one composed of human actors, but let us suppose that such an arrangement would not require coercion at all - that the resource abundance of such a technological utopia would impose the bare minimum of laws to be followed by individuals. Such an arrangement would be similar to the one you are describing. Something very much like hunter-gatherer societies, which existed before agriculturally-based ones, might be all that would remain.

Many thanks! for those further thoughts, Allen.

Of course it's my view--& that of anarcho-socialists more generally--that the State, per se, has no legitimacy whatseover, since all legitimacy is rational & moral, & the State per se is rationally unjustified & immoral.

Here's the basic argument.

All States are coercive & authoritarian by their very nature, even if some States are accidentally better than others by providing more egoistic or collective benefits for their citizens.

Coercion means treating people as mere means &/or mere things, for the egoistic or utilitarian ends of the coercer, by threatening violence or using violence; but treating people as mere means or mere things is always rationally unjustified & immoral.

Authoritarianism says that we have to heed & obey the commands of some authority--in this case the government, whether self-appointed or elected (remember, the Nazis were democratically elected in 32-33)--just because the authority says we must do so, not on independently rationally defensible grounds, AND because they possess the means of coercion.

But the anarcho-socialist says that if any government is morally wrong, then it's morally wrong, & merely possessing the means to compel its citizens to heed & obey its commands, will never make those commands morally right, even if they accidentally provide some egoistic or collective benefits for those citizens.

The State is a giant protection racket, & we shouldn't sell our dignity, autonomy, & our rational capacity for critical thinking, not to mention our respect for the dignity of others, down the river for the promise of egoistic & collective benefits, & all the wonders-to-behold of corporate capitalist wage slavery.

Or another way of putting that, is that coercive authoritarianism isn't MY idea of good fatherhood, so since as per your analogy that that's what States are like (i.e., stern fathers who dispense coercion, punishment, & benefits, & "love" according to their arbitrary whims), then they're nothing but abusive, arbitrary patriarchy, even if accidentally they can provide some egoistic or collective benefits, & therefore again they're rationally unjustified & immoral.

Re your co-worker's idea of a techno-utopia: Interesting!, & very sci-fi (I love sci-fi), but that also sounds deeply dystopian to me.

Notice again that anarcho-socialists are strongly in favor of all & only those social institutions that are based on (i) universal respect for human dignity, (ii) voluntary association, (iii) mutual aid, (iv) the creative development of individuals, & (v) individual & collective autonomy.

So being governed by a coercive authoritarian machine-algorithm that provides heaps of egoistic or collective benefits for us isn't any better than being governed to the same effect by coercive authoritarian human beings, or by coercive authoritarian aliens for that matter....

Robert wrote: "Many thanks! for those further thoughts, Allen.

Of course it's my view--& that of anarcho-socialists more generally--that the State, per se, has no legitimacy whatseover, since all legitimacy is r..."

Hi Robert. I was loathe to supply a justification for what I believed, because I knew what I believed was not arrived at through rational deliberation. Since this is a philosophy discussion group, however, I will try to defend my position.

If I had to defend the moral and political legitimacy of the state, I would do so with appeal to moral particularism. Such an argument would allow me to say that parents may be wrong to coerce their children on threat of violence, but that states may do so and still remain moral. I argue that the distinction between the two cases lie in the scale of the group being subjected to rule. Concerns of practicality are what ultimately force me to countenance violence in one case while rejecting it in the other.

Of course, this analogy was mine in the first place, and your argument does not hinge on the correctness of this analogy. But I would say that the benefits of the state outweigh the negatives, and more importantly, that the consideration of a cost-benefit analysis should allow us to regard the state as moral. I am only prepared to defend the morality of states that abide by democratic rule and the rule of law.

What makes moral particularism salient to this discussion is the question of whether we must abide by moral injunctions in order to be moral. Let us take one relevant example, such as "threats of violence against an individual are an affront to individual dignity and are hence always immoral." I would submit that we do not need to rigidly conform to such a standard to be moral, and so that the decision to engage in violence to impel compliance is not necessarily immoral.

Many thanks! for that follow-up too, Allen.

I think that you're absolutely correct to move the discussion to meta-ethics &/or normative ethics.

If I've understood you correctly, then you're advocating moral particularism about ethical judgments or principles, & utilitarianism or some other version of consequentialism ("cost-benefit analysis") about normative ethics, by way of justifying the political authority of liberal democratic States.

Not surprisingly, then, on the contrary, I'm advocating a broadly Kantian version of moral generalism about ethical judgments or principles, & dignitarianism about normative ethics, by way of justifying anarcho-socialism.

And for better or worse, I've defended both moral generalism & dignitarianism in Kantian Ethics and Human Existence--

https://www.academia.edu/36359647/The...

Obviously, we wouldn't be able to settle those large issues without a great deal of further discussion, & even after all that, perhaps in the end we'd simply have to agree to disagree & mutually tolerate our differences.

One basic moral intuition I have, however, is that it's always morally wrong to violate individual human dignity by treating people as mere means or mere things, & especially via coercion, no matter what the consequences.

As I discovered when teaching Intro ethics for many years, if someone doesn't share that basic moral intuition, then it's hard to provide further proof.

But one possible strategy is to ask my interlocutor:

"Would you be prepared to submit

(i) your own opinions about morality (or anything else), & also

(ii) the question of your own life or death,

to the 'cost-benefit' test?"

Or in other words, if it suited "the public interest" to reject & suppress your opinions just because those opinions offended a majority of other people & caused them pain to hear them, & if it suited "the public interest" to have you tortured & then executed, so that it would bring about significant benefits (say, strong moralistic feelings of pleasure about retributive punishment) for a majority of other people, would you rationally accept that?

If not, & if you (as I think, very reasonably) were to reject that, then presumably the only way you could justify your rational rejection, would be to hold that everyone ought to have sufficient respect for individual human dignity (e.g., your own), no matter what the consequences....

Bob, as I have previously stated, my current preoccupation with my book projects on free will and ethics prevents me from studying your political philosophy in depth until after I finish writing and publishing these books. However, I think it would be helpful, for me and others, if you could address the following questions in a summary manner (as distinguished from our having to immediately read your extended discussions of such matters in your books and essays). If, however, it is impossible for you to respond in a summary manner, perhaps you could cite specific sections/page numbers in your writings where you address these specific issues.

QUESTIONS:

1. What exactly are you proposing as a practical matter to replace the present US democratic republic (i.e., the political order based on the Constitution of 1787 and the amendments, explicit and via judicial construction thereto)?

2. How would/could the transition to your proposed new order take place?

3. In your new order, would there be any kind of government at any level and, if so, what kind? Or would it be anarchism pure and simple?

4. Would your new order eschew all foreign and defense policy? Would it be strictly isolationist? Would individuals and private organizations be allowed to conduct their own foreign policy, e.g. by way of military intervention when they deem it appropriate? What kind of defense would be undertaken if the geographical territory of your new order were invaded by a hostile, authoritarian foreign power? How would your new order have reacted, if at all, to the conquest of continental Europe by Hitler? Would it have allowed Hitler to complete his imperial plans by also eventually conquering Great Britain?

5. How would your new order deal with criminal justice? As you know, in his Second Treatise of Government, John Locke adumbrated a “state of nature” in which everyone originally was responsible for their own defense against aggression and for executing their own retribution against aggressors. Locke argued that government arose as a result of the difficulties of such a state of nature, especially the problem of each person being a judge in that person’s own case. Would your new order resemble a Lockean state of nature? (Never mind the Hobbesian state of nature and Hobbes’s Leviathan solution, with which I don’t agree, and never mind, for present purposes, Locke’s obsession with property and all the ramifications thereof). In such a scenario, would you allow people to have guns for self-defense, as government is no longer the guarantor of such security?

6. I understand, from anarcho-capitalist tracts, that contractual matters could be handled by private contract in the absence of government (the parties could agree to private arbitration, and contract violators could be ostracized from further contractual relations). But what about tort law? Anarcho-capitalists posit the existence of competing insurance agencies, i.e. private defense agencies, to formulate, administer, and execute tort and criminal law. To my mind, this would be a throwback to Hobbes’s war of all against all, of which we see many examples in recent Middle Eastern history.

7. Would your proposed new order have some sort of “social safety net” to help those who could not support themselves due to medical or other reasons? If so, would some sort of government administer such safety net, or would it be solely the responsibility of private charities? Would the work of private charities be sufficient in a very complex society such as ours?

8. If some sort of government existed to address the preceding matters, how would it be financed? Would voluntary financing possibly be sufficient?

These are just some of many questions I have about anarcho-socialism. I happen to have a strong background in history, government, law (constitutional and otherwise), and political and ethical philosophy. I am not, however, all that conversant with Kantian and with twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy. Accordingly, I approach these questions from a hard-headed, realistic point of view—rooted not in Machiavelli and Hobbes but (with qualifications) in Aristotle and Locke. The experience of the twentieth century (Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, et al.) suggests to me that we need to be careful about attempting to implement utopian schemes—especially vague utopian schemes—lest the results on the ground be greater authoritarianism and totalitarianism rather than less.

As you know, I agree with your views on free will and (to the extent I’ve read your writings) on ethics, though I don’t know whether I will agree with all the details in your writings on these issues until I read them. I have questions, however, about your political philosophy. As I understand it, you apply your Kantian ethics directly to political matters regardless of the consequences (as did Kant, if I understand him correctly). But is this a category error? Is political philosophy by nature a different sort of animal than individual ethics? I’ve had this same question regarding anarcho-capitalism and right-libertarianism. Their cardinal rule is the nonaggression principle: no person or entity has a right to initiate physical force against any other person or entity. I submit that such principle (or analogous principle in anarcho-socialism) is correct as applied to individual humans but impossible in the nature of things to be applied to government. Strict application of such principle to government would necessarily result in anarchism, which then leads to the questions I posed above. Yes, such a principle could perhaps be applicable to a hunter-gatherer society, but we have not had such a society for several millennia. The question, to my mind, is what we do with the kind of complex societies we now have.

Robert wrote: "Many thanks! for that follow-up too, Allen.

I think that you're absolutely correct to move the discussion to meta-ethics &/or normative ethics.

If I've understood you correctly, then you're advoc..."

That's a very interesting line of attack, Robert, and I have a reply. First, I would like to address the question of whether liberal states can be defended with regard to my commitment to communitarianism. I will then get to whether human rights can ever be sacrificed "for the greater good."

While reading a book about contemporary trends in Confucianism, I ran upon an argument about why we should accept democracy. Confucianism traditionally prizes order above freedom, so it is interesting that one scholar (I forget who) argues that you should be prepared to accept democracy as your choice of government if you want to build a society, because the way to get order is to protect freedom. Let us say we are adopting a communitarian vantage point that upholds the priority of the group above the individual. I am not sure if I ultimately agree with this, but let's say for the moment that I am really communitarian and reject liberal individualism. Let us say I am quasi-fascist in my deepest convictions but not necessarily in the kinds of government I would support. I might still want to keep a notion of rights, although they would be much more abridged compared to someone who was prepared to defend the intrinsic importance of the individual. I argue that liberal societies can be defended on communitarian grounds because liberal states build the best societies.

Regarding human rights, I thought about arguing about how there are some rights, like free speech in the United States, which we all value but are not absolutely protected. My point would have been to say that some rights we regard as essential are nevertheless subordinated to society given the situation. But I realized that this might be because free speech is not a fundamental human right, unlike others, and so this perhaps doesn't make my point convincingly. There might conceivably be rights that we would consider to be fundamental, and therefore inviolable. I think the right to life would so qualify, since I do not believe in capital punishment. However, I am not so well-versed on this subject that I can be certain if any other rights might qualify. Regardless, I would respond to your argument that, given what I know about the subject, I agree - I would not want to live in a society where the government can decide on a drop of a hat that my rights should be sacrificed "for the greater good." I would want them to take my rights seriously.

On the other hand, I do not agree that a government necessarily behaves immorally if it violates human rights, even moreso if they are not what I have described as fundamental ones, such as the right to life. A convincing example does not readily come to mind, but I imagine there are trolley-problem-type philosophical puzzles where a state would have to choose among the lesser of several evils. One could conceivably imagine a state that had to negotiate a decision space where sacrificing human rights or societal goods were conceivable options. I do not agree that such a decision is necessarily immoral just because all outcomes might be. Perhaps one might argue that the outcomes themselves are all immoral, regardless of our ingenuity. But the decision involves moral deliberation, and hence, in some sense, is itself moral. And as part of that, I would be willing to entertain the abridgment of human rights for the sake of the good of society when no alternative presents itself. That would involve trade-offs that does not see our choice of ends as a consideration separate from the means we use to attain them. I am not sure about that. Perhaps there are some ends, such as the inviolability of the right to life, that I would regard as exceptions.

Wow!, many thanks for all those hard questions, Alan.

Luckily, I've addressed all of them, in one way or another, in the last four sections of part 2, & throughout part 3, of Kant, Agnosticism, & Anarchism, aka KAA--

https://www.academia.edu/36359665/The...

And I've also recently elaborated my view on (i) guns & the Second Amendment, (ii) the permissible use of force in a dignitarian moral & political framework, & (iii) the relation between Statism & corporate capitalism, here--

https://www.academia.edu/41206446/Gun...

https://www.academia.edu/40896854/On_...

https://www.academia.edu/39591836/Sta...

That's 100 + 19 + 26 + 10 pages altogether; & of course, since I didn't write them with your specific list of questions in mind, it would be difficult to quote precise page-ranges by way of a set of bullet-point answers to each of your questions.

Nevertheless I'll also try to respond very briefly to each one, & cite sections, so that you'll have a general idea of what to look for in the texts I've just linked.

Re 1. What exactly are you proposing as a practical matter to replace the present US democratic republic (i.e., the political order based on the Constitution of 1787 and the amendments, explicit and via judicial construction thereto)?

My view is radically cosmopolitan or global, with no States, & no World-State, & universal open borders.

Of course, it would be practically impossible to go over to that all in one jump.

So as the first step, I'm proposing a single North American political zone consisting of what's currently Canada, the USA, & Mexico, with open borders & absolute freedom of movement within the zone, governed by a new shared set of political principles.

That's sketched in KAA, section 3.1.

Re 2. How would/could the transition to your proposed new order take place?

I've provided a general theory of anarcho-socialist social dynamics in KAA, part 2, sections 2.8-2.10, including a system of participatory decision-making (in effect, radical direct democracy) that would replace majoritarian democracy.

Re 3. In your new order, would there be any kind of government at any level and, if so, what kind? Or would it be anarchism pure and simple?

No, it wouldn't be anarchism "pure and simple," if by that you mean anarchy in the classical sense.

What I'm proposing is that people would collectively devolve all & only existing social institutions that are rationally unjustified & immoral, & in their place create & sustain a set of new ones, that are rationally justified & morally permissible or obligatory, following the general procedures of participatory decision-making.

The basic set of such social institutions are described in KAA, sections 3.3-3.10, & include

(i) Truly Generous Universal Basic Income,
(ii) a 15 hour workweek,
(iii) Universal Basic Jobs in an ecologically sustainable economy, (iv) Free Higher Education in a system that would replace the current professional academy,
(v) Universal Free Healthcare,
(vi)Universal Open Borders,
(vii) Gun Abolitionism,
(viii) Marriage Reform, &
(ix) abolition of the current mass incarceration system of crime-&-punishment.

Re 4. Would your new order eschew all foreign and defense policy? Would it be strictly isolationist? Would individuals and private organizations be allowed to conduct their own foreign policy, e.g. by way of military intervention when they deem it appropriate? What kind of defense would be undertaken if the geographical territory of your new order were invaded by a hostile, authoritarian foreign power? How would your new order have reacted, if at all, to the conquest of continental Europe by Hitler? Would it have allowed Hitler to complete his imperial plans by also eventually conquering Great Britain?

The system I'm proposing, as I've said, is radically cosmopolitan, so there wouldn't be any question of defense, foreign policy, isolationism or non-isolationism, etc., etc., in our current senses of those terms, all of which presuppose the existence of States.

As for defending & protecting ourselves & innocent others against bad people & evil communities/regimes, such defense & protection is not only permissible but also sometimes obligatory, & is all dealt with in the essay on the permissible use of force that I cited above (i.e., the second linked essay).

But the general idea is that it's entirely possible to respect human dignity in a way that's neither quietistic nor passive.

Re 6. I understand, from anarcho-capitalist tracts, that contractual matters could be handled by private contract in the absence of government (the parties could agree to private arbitration, and contract violators could be ostracized from further contractual relations). But what about tort law? Anarcho-capitalists posit the existence of competing insurance agencies, i.e. private defense agencies, to formulate, administer, and execute tort and criminal law. To my mind, this would be a throwback to Hobbes’s war of all against all, of which we see many examples in recent Middle Eastern history.

My view is that the very idea of "anarcho-capitalism" is not only conceptually incoherent (hence an oxymoron) but also historically false, & I've worked out an argument for that thesis in the third of the essays linked above.

But in any case, I think we agree that a world of rogue capitalists would be an absolute catastrophe in every way.

Re 7. Would your proposed new order have some sort of “social safety net” to help those who could not support themselves due to medical or other reasons? If so, would some sort of government administer such safety net, or would it be solely the responsibility of private charities? Would the work of private charities be sufficient in a very complex society such as ours?

It's a common fallacy about anarcho-socialism that it's somehow inconsistent with the existence of any well-structured, wide-ranging social institutions for satisfying true human needs, mutual aid, & developing the creative potentialities of individuals: on the contrary, anarcho-socialism is ALL ABOUT constructing & sustaining a multiplicity of such social institutions, based on respect for human dignity & free association, hence none of them involves or requires coercion, or otherwise oppresses people.

My most recent book co-authored with Michelle Maiese, The Mind-Body Politic--

https://www.academia.edu/38764188/The...

develops a general theory of social institutions, & carefully distinguishes between (i) destructive, deforming social institutions, & (ii) constructive, enabling social institutions.

The details of that theory are worked out mainly in chs. 2, 3, 6, & 7.

But in general, anarcho-socialism says that we should devolve & dismantle all & only the destructive, deforming social institutions, & create & sustain all & only the constructive, enabling ones.

And of course if there are any constructive, enabling ones currently in existence (& I think there are, e.g., this discussion group & Doctors Without Borders, etc. etc.) , they should also be preserved, sustained, & even further developed.

Otherwise, the rest of my answer to this question is the same as my answer to question 3.

Re 8. If some sort of government existed to address the preceding matters, how would it be financed? Would voluntary financing possibly be sufficient?

Obviously the multiplicity of constructive, enabling social institutions would need to be funded, & my proposal is that it would require highly progressive taxation & the abolition of the military.

Of course, like every other collective decision & action in a dignitarian anarcho-socialist framework, this would all have to be voluntary, & worked out by participatory decision-making, & not coerced.

And one final remark: Yes!, I'm explicitly denying that there's any difference in principle between ethics & politics.

But I also think that the idea that anarcho-socialism would necessarily & inevitably cause humanity to regress to a hunter-gatherer society in "the state of nature,", &/or produce a war of all against all, is fundamentally a result of the deeply entrenched cognitive illusion that classical liberal or neoliberal Hobbesian or neo-Hobbesian dogmas about human nature, politics, & the legitimacy of State authority are all unquestionably correct & fundamentally impervious to critical examination.

And as per my most recent reply to Allen, I'll also repeat that at the end of the day, we may well not be able to overcome our philosophical differences in this connection by rational argumentation, & have to settle for agreeing to disagree, mutual respect, & mutual tolerance.

But as a coda I also can't resist mentioning that an anarcho-socialist view of things perfectly supports such mutual respect & mutual tolerance, whereas Statism requires obedience to all the commands of government, even the rationally unjustified & immoral ones, especially including censoring & punishing "dangerous" opinions, etc., etc., & backs all that up with coercion....

Actually, two examples just occurred to me that show I do not believe the right to life is inviolable. The first is abortion, the second is the choice to disconnect life support to people in a coma who we can be certain will never wake up. So it appears I can remain a moral particularist, at least for now.

Robert wrote (#13): "Wow!, many thanks for all those hard questions, Alan.

Luckily, I've addressed all of them, in one way or another, in the last four sections of part 2, & throughout part 3, of Kant, Agnosticism, & ..."

Thanks, Bob, for taking the time to respond to my questions. I can see that I'm going to have to do a considerable amount of further reading in your writings on political philosophy before I can comment further about these questions. As previously noted, I don't have time to do that at present, but I'll get to it one of these years. (Note: I've read up to 5.2.3 in The Mind-Body Politic and will finish that book at some point in the near future.)

Hi Robert, I think I got so caught up trying to make sure my reply would be consistent with everything else I said that I forgot to make it sure it concisely addressed your point. Basically, yes, I agree that it is a problem if the state can silence me or deprive me of my life. But I don't have a problem with the state silencing dangerous opinions (within reason) or using tax dollars to fund abortion clinics. So I can see reasons why we would want to silence people or to deprive people of their lives, under certain situations. (I think fetuses are human beings, hence my opinion.) It all comes down to a judgment call, which accountability through democratic elections are meant to ensure.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that people who go to the far right and people who go to the far left eventually end up joining hands to call for the dissolution of the state, or at least some of each group do.

If so, why is this the case? Are the ones who join hands romantic, Rousseauian--humans are all born good and society corrupts, the bigger the society, the worse the corruption?

I was about to remark that I didn't know of any right-wing movements that favored the dissolution of the state, until I recalled accelerationists. I am not sure about neo-reactionaries, but I'm not curious enough to look up what they believe.

To reappropriate slightly Bob Hanna's metaphor, perhaps the left-right distinction is a mirage we would be better off without when thinking about what people really believe.

Many many thanks! for your follow-up comments, Alan, Allen, & Robert.

For the moment, I'll add only two quick things.

First, I completely agree with Allen that the so-called "horseshoe theory" (far left & far right bend around to meet in some crazy version of anarchism that looks very like the Hobbesian state of nature & its war of all against all) does indeed flow mainly from the cognitive illusion I've been criticizing, in part because the Left-Right analogy or metaphor isn't really adequate to capture crucial contrasts between different kinds of anarchism, different kinds of socialism, different kinds of liberalism, & different kinds of conservatism, not to mention fascism & neo-fascism.

But also in part because, as I mentioned, I think that so-called "anarcho-capitalism" is conceptually incoherent & historically false.

Really, what they're advocating is a minimal State coercive legal framework for the purposes of coercive rogue corporate capitalism, which as I said, along with Alan, I think would be a complete disaster.

Second, what Allen was saying about the right-to-life & not being committed to it as a strictly universal moral principle, raises many subtle issues about the relation between a universalist dignitarian ethics & the right-to-life.

E.g., dignitarians of a Kantian sort attribute dignity to all & only real persons, & not all biologically human living organisms, some of whom aren't persons (e.g., early term fetuses, anencephalic infants, human beings in persistent vegetative states, etc.).

So, on the dignitarian view that human persons begin their lives during the third term of pregnancy, then early term abortions are morally permissible.

Also, it's not true that universally respecting human dignity entails the strict right not to be killed.

One example is self-defence: if someone attacks you & the only way to stop them is to kill them, that's morally permissible--but it's also crucial to note that if any other non-lethal way of stopping them is humanly possible, then it's impermissible to kill your attacker.

E.g., if you could stop a person who attacks you by punching them, or tripping them & sitting on them till help arrives, then it would be morally impermissible to go on to strangle them to death, or shoot them.

And another example is the famous/notorious Trolley Problem: if a runaway trolley is heading towards 5 people trapped on the tracks, & you're a bystander standing at a switch, but also see that turning the trolley away from the 5 down a spur will kill 1 innocent person trapped on the spur, & if there were any other humanly possible way to save all of them, then you'd save all 6 people, but it's just not humanly possible, then it's morally permissible & perhaps even obligatory for you to kill 1 to save 5, & everyone's dignity is being sufficiently respected, because if you're the 1 trapped on the spur, it's just plain bad luck, & if the roles were reversed, then you'd still do the same if you were the bystander at the switch because you respect everyone's dignity & aren't an egoist....

Hi Robert, those are helpful clarifications regarding what your position entails. Your position sounds much more plausible to me as a result.

I am curious though. What is your attitude towards law enforcement? For example, do you think there should be anyone to enforce traffic rules? One reason to have law enforcement would be that it would be better than several alternatives I can think of: 1) the total lack of any systematic method of stopping criminal behavior, or 2) mob style justice in the style of lynchings. I am not saying I am a fan of law enforcement, at least as it is practiced in America. But I'm not sure I can imagine life without it.

As you have clarified, the dignitarian position forbids committing harm to others, except out of self-defense, but what does it say about committing harm to oneself? Are there any times when it is permissible to intervene when people are clearly are not competent to make basic decisions on their own behalf? Does treating people as ends mean that I must always respect people's decisions about themselves? I don't think I agree if the answer is yes.

For example, how does the dignitarian position regard the autonomy of children? Or those who are simply mentally unfit? And what about people who are simply terrible at making decisions for themselves? If they are adults and of sound body and mind, must we always respect their decisions about their own lives? And does the dignitarian position have anything to say about libertarian paternalism, which attempts to manipulate people in ways "for their own good?"

Robert wrote (#19): "I think that so-called "anarcho-capitalism" is conceptually incoherent & historically false.

Really, what they're advocating is a minimal State coercive legal framework for the purposes of coercive rogue corporate capitalism, which as I said, along with Alan, I think would be a complete disaster."

Actually, the founder of anarchocapitalism, Murray Rothbard, advocated (at least until his late turn to theocratic paleolibertarianism) the complete absence of the state, and he shared your objections to statism in very similar emotional language. He believed that many of the evils of what we now know as corporate capitalism would be eliminated in an anarchocapitalist society. Indeed, corporations are purely an invention of government. An entity is not recognized as a corporation until it is granted a license by the state (in the US, usually a state government). The cardinal legal feature of state-created corporations is limited liability, i.e., that the shareholders cannot (with rare exceptions involving the legal concept of "piercing the corporate veil") be liable in contract or tort beyond the monetary amount of their investment in the corporation. Needless to say, that gives corporations a huge advantage in the economy, and it's all (under present circumstances) created by the state. I have not studied Rothbard in great depth, but I think he states that limited liability should be created only through contract as a voluntary matter of the contracting parties. If I recall correctly, he taught that tort and criminal law would be handled by competing private insurance (defense) agencies. But there would be absolutely no government. To my mind, this leads inevitably to the Hobbesian war of all against all.

Many thanks! for those follow-ups, Allen & Alan, as always.

Re Murray Rothbard--Actually I haven't read his work, so am not in a position to comment on it directly.

But I should also say that the anarcho-socialist view I'm proposing isn't either against private property per se or against small-scale, ecologically sustainable, non-oppressive, non-corporate capitalism (provided that it's also in service of larger dignitarian projects like a truly generous universal basic income, universal basic jobs with 15 hour workweeks, universal healthcare, universal free K-through- 12 & higher education, universal open borders, etc., etc.).

So dignitarian anarcho-socialism is sharply different in those respects from classical Marxist or Marxist-Leninist communist socialism.

As to Allen's hard questions--

Re: What is your attitude towards law enforcement? For example, do you think there should be anyone to enforce traffic rules? One reason to have law enforcement would be that it would be better than several alternatives I can think of: 1) the total lack of any systematic method of stopping criminal behavior, or 2) mob style justice in the style of lynchings. I am not saying I am a fan of law enforcement, at least as it is practiced in America. But I'm not sure I can imagine life without it.

My overall view about the current legal system & law enforcement is sketched in section 3.10 in Kant, Agnosticism, & Anarchism--
https://www.academia.edu/36359665/The...

& I've also worked out an account of the conditions under which defensive & protective force are morally permissible or obligatory, here--

https://www.academia.edu/40896854/On_...

But in general, the idea is that although an anarcho-socialist system has various sorts of collective principles or rules of conduct that are decided upon by participatory decision-making, & although force can (& indeed sometimes must) be systematically used for self-defense & for protecting innocent others, no one is ever coerced into doing anything.

And that would go for traffic rules & everything else.

I know it's hard to imagine!, but I also think that this is part-&-parcel of the cognitive illusion I've been talking about, to the effect that people are essentially egoistic & mutually antagonistic, & therefore need to be coerced "for their own & everyone else's good" in order to prevent the war of all against all.

E.g., even as regards even current law enforcement, I think that most Americans literally can't imagine a police force that isn't heavily armed, & yet there are several countries where the police don't carry guns, & the crime rates are far lower than in the USA.

So it's not a thought-experiment: you can simply visit those countries & see that it's not just "philosophical unicorns," it's for real.

Anyhow, for some critical thoughts about policing & law enforcement that are similar to mine, you might also look at this excellent recent book:

Alex Vitale, The End of Policing--https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426...

Re: As you have clarified, the dignitarian position forbids committing harm to others, except out of self-defense, but what does it say about committing harm to oneself? Are there any times when it is permissible to intervene when people are clearly are not competent to make basic decisions on their own behalf? Does treating people as ends mean that I must always respect people's decisions about themselves? I don't think I agree if the answer is yes.

Notice that I didn't say that dignitarianism "forbids forbids committing harm to others, except out of self-defense," but actually said that force is permissible only for the purposes of self-defense/self-protection AND the defense/protection of innocent others.

And there will certainly be some cases in which people will have to be restrained from hurting themselves, if they're demonstrably not psychologically competent (at that time, or perhaps permanently) to make reasonable self-respecting choices.

Similarly, children will need some special care that more mature people don't need, so in some cases they will simply also have to be restrained from hurting themselves--e.g., from playing with fire, or drinking poison, or running out in front of buses & cars, or walking on the railings of bridges or along the edges of cliffs, etc., etc.

But as regards people who are "are adults and of sound body and mind, must we always respect their decisions about their own lives?," I think that yes we must always respect their decisions, providing that they also sufficiently respect the dignity of others, although that shouldn't stop us from advising them to reconsider or do otherwise if they've actually asked our advice, &, if they're loved ones or close friends, when we think that they're heading for disaster.

And re: And does the dignitarian position have anything to say about libertarian paternalism, which attempts to manipulate people in ways "for their own good?".

The dignitarian anarcho-socialist position I'm advocating is generally opposed to such manipulation, even including subtler strategies like "nudging," since it's coercive, & you can't coerce people into choosing & acting in a morally good or right way.

And that's because coercion undermines people's free will & practical agency, which (as I think) is a necessary condition of morally good or right choice & action, & also a (necessary &) sufficient condition of moral responsibility.

--But that of course brings us back full circle to issues of free will, about which you're an all-out skeptic, & moral responsibility, about which you're an all-out attribution-theoretic communitarian, so I think we're probably just going to have to agree to disagree in those areas, & in this particular connection (i.e., about liberal paternalism)....

Hi Robert, that's a very thorough response, and I have added several of the books you've referenced to my list of books to read. (Yes, it keeps growing beyond its currently unmanageable size. No, I don't know how I will ever read all of them.)

That said, I have tried to envision the society you have described, and the only outcome I can envision is people submitting to the nearest, most powerful local tribe that will in all likelihood be ruled tyrannically by some warlord. I think what would need to happen for the future you have envisioned to be sustainable is a fundamental change in human nature itself. We would need to cease to be violent, ideology-driven conformists. I am not optimistic that something like that would ever happen, but given the generally utopian vision of your project, it is not out of character to suggest that something like that is possible. Even if the effect of your work is simply to enlarge the moral consciousness of people who read it, I think it will already have served a purpose.

In post #22, Robert says, "I know it's hard to imagine!, but I also think that this is part-&-parcel of the cognitive illusion I've been talking about, to the effect that people are essentially egoistic & mutually antagonistic, & therefore need to be coerced `for their own & everyone else's good' in order to prevent the war of all against all."

To me, this passage seems to be coming from the romantic viewpoint I mention in post #17,

I don't think ALL people are "essentially egoistic & mutually antagonistic," as Robert puts it in this passage. But I do think SOME are and that that creates a problem for everyone else.

Many thanks! for those follow-up thoughts, Allen & Robert.

Yes, if I can produce some philosophical "consciousness-raising" about what I'm calling the cognitive illusion of classical liberal Statism, & also about the rational justifiability & real possibility of anarcho-socialism, even if I don't fully convince anyone, then that will at least be something.

Still, as regards debunking the cognitive myth of classical liberal Statism, just to summarize & to add some further arguments, my aim is to show

(i) that it's not true that rational human animals are egoistic/self-interested & mutually antagonistic as a matter of natural necessity or historical inevitability, & furthermore

(ii) it's equally false that the State is rationally justified & morally right in coercing us for our own good, lest we fall back into a state of nature & a catastrophic war of all against all.

Now Robert concedes that that it's not true that rational human animals are egoistic/self-interested & mutually antagonistic as a matter of natural necessity or historical inevitability.

And of course I'll agree that people can be egoistic/self-interested & mutually antagonistic, & that as a matter of actual fact some people are very egoistic & anti-social, most of the time.

But then no one has to be this way, i.e., no sane rational human animal is essentially this way, & an updated Kantian ethics, if sound, shows

(i) that not only ought we to choose & act in a way that non-egoistic & altruistic, & to treat everyone including ourselves with sufficient respect for their rational human dignity, but also we really can do this, not to mention

(ii) that it's rationally unjustified & immoral to treat people as mere means or mere things, e.g., by coercion, but that's what States are set up to do, so States are inherently rationally justified & immoral.

And this isn't just philosophical unicorns & cloud cuckoo land!

At the risk of adding more books to your huge reading lists, the empirical fact that most people are altruistic at least some of the time, & that some people are actually extremely altruistic (although we may reasonably wonder whether such extreme altruism is morally required of us), is demonstrated in this very good recent book by Larissa MacFarquhar, Strangers Drowning--

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...

Moreover, the Yale political anthropologist J.C. Scott in his equally excellent recent book Against the Grain, shows as a matter of empirical fact that for 4000 years before the earliest States, life was neither a war of all against all, nor nasty, brutish, & short, & that folks lived in various kinds of reasonably complex & stable, although not sedentary, social arrangements--

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/97803...

And in her also equally excellent 2009 book, A Paradise Built in Hell--

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...

Rebecca Solnit also shows as a matter of empirical fact that when natural or social disasters cause a temporary breakdown in State structures & control, people are at least as likely spontaneously to cooperate & show solidarity in mutually beneficial ways, as they are to act egoistically & mutually antagonistically.

So I do think that my view is empirically & conceptually well-supported, even if it's "out there" & counter-orthodox....

Hi Robert. I thought about what you wrote as I drove to work this morning, and I have a few thoughts.

To begin with, let's first drop this whole notion of a fixed human nature that I more or less implied in my previous post. I think human potential is essentially unbounded in theory, although in practice it is always contingent upon the state of affairs as it is. That is, people are more likely to do certain things more than others, especially given their preexisting habits and natural dispositions.

Let us also for the moment assume that the majority of people are altruistic and cooperative, and will be sufficiently indoctrinated that most will not want to change this anarcho-socialist status quo as you have described it.

I want to get at a potential stumbling block in the political arrangement you are advocating. You don't believe in suppressing free expression, or any other kind of freedom. Isn't there a contradiction in these commitments? If there is freedom of expression, what will you do when people start talking about the wonders of government and decide to establish one? They will start to constrict other people's freedom, and because everyone else will be a Kantian anarcho-socialist, the majority will be beholden not to interfere with the actions of the minority who do want a state.

I think things will come to a head when this minority decides that they are tired of dealing with petty crime and societal inefficiency, and decide they would rather sacrifice some of their freedoms "so that the trains run on time" and that the unrehabilitatable felons will be kept in a facility where they won't cause trouble for everyone else. Wouldn't that mean that the arrangement you are advocating is unsustainable?

Thanks so much for those further thoughts, Allen, as always.

You're absolutely correct that freedom of expression & speech is a hard or tricky case for the dignitarian, anti-coercive anarcho-socialism I'm defending.

But perhaps not too surprisingly, my defense of free expression/speech is also framed in terms of dignitarian, anti-coercive principles or reasons.

That's worked out in Kant, Agnosticism, & Anarchism, section 3.12--

https://www.academia.edu/36359665/The...

The upshot is that while free expression & speech are given very wide scope, they're not absolutely unrestricted: so, personal slander (that would, say, destroy someone's career &/or cause them to be fired from their jobs), coercive speech (e.g., threats or ordering someone's murder), & incitement to violence, aren't morally permissible.

But at the same time, speech that's merely offensive to some or many people is morally permissible.

The hardest or trickiest case is when people express opinions which, if (& only if) those opinions were then converted into action, would be rationally unjustified & morally impermissible acts.

E.g., in your example, the Statist minority in an anarcho-socialist post-State world, should be allowed to express & HOLD the opinions they hold, but should NOT be allowed to coerce people, even it means making the trains run on time, or whatever.

So my general view is that, in the case of morally impermissible doctrines, HOLDING such opinions is morally permissible & to be tolerated, even if we strongly disagree with them &/or find them morally or otherwise repugnant.

But if the ACTS advocated by those doctrines are actually carried out, then that's not morally permissible, & can also, if push comes to shove, be met with morally permissible force as self-defense or the protection of innocent others.

So again, there's a fundamental distinction between HOLDING bad or evil OPINIONS (permissible as free expression/speech), & PERFORMING the bad or evil ACTS that the real-world implementation of those opinions would entail (impermissible as violations of dignity).

In practice, however, applying the distinction between merely HOLDING bad or evil OPINIONS, which is permissible, & PERFORMING bad or evil ACTS, which is impermissible, can be extremely difficult when we also realize that some acts of expression or speech are themselves evil acts, e.g., personal slander, coercive speech (e.g., threats, or ordering someone's murder), or incitement to violence.

Here's a real world example involving people all of whom are philosophers.

Two years ago, one of the journals I edit received a submission from a disabled philosopher who thinks that the current treatment of disabled people in the USA & elsewhere is so bad that s/he also advocates violent resistance to such treatment, including coercion & even terrorism.

The question was whether we'd publish this article or reject/censor it.

I argued that we should publish it & not censor it, because although the author was holding a view that, if implemented would entail morally impermissible acts (coercive violence & even terrorism), it wasn't in & of itself morally impermissible for her/him to HOLD that view.

If on the other hand, the author had argued that disabled people should rise up & murder Peter Singer (who is often a target of their criticism), then that would have been incitement to violence at the very least & possibly even ordering murder, & therefore I either wouldn't have published it or would have permitted publication only with some censorship.

But if I refused to publish or censored every text that expresses a view I morally disagree with, then I couldn't publish or would have to censor any text in which someone advocates any State of any kind, including liberal democratic States, which would be absurd.

Now in fact the editorial committee for the journal (10 people at the time) split 6-4 as to whether this article should be published as is (6), or not-published/censored (4).

After a few rounds of discussion, I proposed a compromise view according to which we published the article as-is, & then those on the editorial committee who disagreed with that could also write & publish dissenting opinions in the same issue of the journal.

In the end, however, the 4 not-publish/censorship people on the committee didn't like that compromise & simply resigned.

So we ended up publishing the article as-is, & here it is--

https://www.cckp.space/single-post/20...

& you can judge for yourself about whether you think it should have been published, or not-published/censored.

But in any case, the example shows vividly that free expression/speech is a hard or tricky case, not just for anarcho-socialists, but for all liberal democratic Statists too, as of course we already knew in connection with debates on & around First Amendment issues....

Hi Robert, thank you for clarifying the issue. The example you cited is fascinating in its own right, but I was surprised by one detail in your response. You say that "if push comes to shove, [the aggressors may] be met with morally permissible force as self-defense or the protection of innocent others." This was actually the point I was driving at - that the post-statist majority would either have to accept that the statist minority could create their own police force, or else (as your response suggests) that the post-statist majority would be forced to create one themselves. Otherwise, we would be left in the absurd position where a husband whose wife was raped would have to mount a principled defense of the rapist's freedom so long as the rapist was not posing an immediate threat to anyone else.

If there is to be some kind of way of keeping the peace, then I don't have any objections to what you are proposing. However, the problem I am describing would reproduce itself on the inter-state level as well as on the intra-state level. How would a post-statist society defend itself against a foreign state that had a standing army and the desire to impose its will on the post-statist one? The anarcho-socialists would have to make an ugly choice between forming an army or total capitulation. The obvious choice is that the post-statist society would have to form something very much like a state, which collected taxes and organized volunteers (or conscripts) for the sake of a standing army. Perhaps you are in agreement there, and that the only concern one would have would be that this army be dissolved once the threat was gone.

The point I am driving at is that while you can plausibly mount a critique of the morality of the state, I think attacking the necessity of the state is a far more challenging affair. However, I am open to being convinced and am curious if you have something you might say in response - that is, if this conversation is not tiresome for you. I have rarely ever met someone on the internet who could continue to defend their political views at length without descending into hysterics, and I am gratified that our present conversation is an exception given my previous experience.

Many thanks! for these very thoughtful follow-up comments, Allen, as always.

In responding to them, I want to make two quick points about dignitarian anarcho-socialism, & one about the very idea of philosophical dialogue.

The first is that it's a common fallacy about political anarchism in general & especially dignitarian anarcho-socialism in particular, that it involves the rejection of all social institutions.

On the contrary, dignitarian anarcho-socialism rejects all & only those social institutions that are in violation of sufficient respect for the dignity of all persons & the satisfaction of true human needs, i.e., all & only those social institutions that Michelle Maiese & I call "destructive, deforming" institutions in The Mind-Body Politic--

https://www.academia.edu/38764188/The...

In particular, every State & State-like institution is destructive & deforming, precisely because it's coercive & authoritarian.

Correspondingly, & by a diametric contrast, dignitarian anarcho-socialism affirms & seeks to create & sustain all & only those social institutions that sufficiently respect the dignity of all persons & satisfy true human needs, especially including mutual aid & the full development of the creative potential of autonomous individuals & groups.

Therefore, a dignitarian anarcho-socialist world would be filled with such social institutions!, it's just that none of them would be coercive & authoritarian, radically unlike States & other State-like institutions.

Of course, the actual world of States & the dignitarian anarcho-socialist world would resemble each other in both having lots of social institutions: but that's a purely extrinsic, superficial resemblance, & like saying that bad people & good people resemble each other in both being people: well yes, but the difference between bad & good makes all the difference in the world.

Second, it's crucial to remember that the use of force in a dignitarian anarcho-socialist framework is always last-resort, & maintains a purely defensive, protective posture, as per this essay--

https://www.academia.edu/40896854/On_...

In thinking & writing about this issue, I & my co-author, Otto Paans, looked at the use of force in samurai ethics & the martial arts more generally, as models for the sort of non-quietistic & non-passive but also strictly non-coercive, defensive, & protective use of force that we have in mind.

Now if someone says, "Oh look, now you're using force!, so you're just as bad as the State," then that would be like some playground bully pushing you & pushing you & attacking you & your friends, & you telling him calmly to back off & stop, etc., etc., so that finally you have to push back or wrestle him to the ground & sit on him for a while, & there he is lying on the ground whimpering like a beaten dog, cursing you, & yelling that you're just as bad he is: wrong again, barnacle breath....

And one final point about philosophical dialogue.

One of my ongoing projects is to work out a theory of genuine philosophical dialogue in particular & of radically enlightened educational dialogue more generally, & sharply contrast it with mere winner-takes-all debate in professional academic philosophy in particular & contemporary institutions of higher education more generally, & in contemporary politics, & above all the destructive, deforming babel of people ranting in their digital echo-chambers or screaming at each other over the internet.

See, e.g., this essay--

https://www.academia.edu/40950935/Wha...

So it's a rare & real pleasure to engage in genuine mutually respectful philosophical dialogue, as people do in this discussion group--& many thanks again Alan!, for organizing this.

Robert wrote: "So it's a rare & real pleasure to engage in genuine mutually respectful philosophical dialogue, as people do in this discussion group--& many thanks again Alan!, for organizing this."

You're welcome. This group has developed in the way I always contemplated it.

Robert wrote: "Many thanks! for these very thoughtful follow-up comments, Allen, as always.

In responding to them, I want to make two quick points about dignitarian anarcho-socialism, & one about the very idea o..."

Hi Robert. I must first begin by apologizing for the low quality of my last few posts. The point being made was often unclear or sloppily conceived. To make up for it, I decided to read the linked article you wrote about acceptable use of force and am attempting a coherent response.

I think my objection to your position as stated in your paper is primarily against the notion that the use of force must be of "last resort" in a "crisis" situation in order to be morally permissible. I gave an example in my previous post that was poorly connected to the surrounding text, but I think it is effective as an illustration of the point I am trying to make.

The example was this: let us say we have a husband and wife, and the wife is raped by a neighbor. If the husband is an anarcho-socialist and a follower of dignitarian ethics, is the husband morally obligated by his philosophical position to believe that the neighbor not suffer any repercussions for what he has done? Let us say we are not interested in punishing the neighbor, but simply want to make sure he does not do it again, either to the wife or to anyone else. Our system of ethics would be powerless to justify any form of action that would prevent the rapist from continuing as he has unless we caught him in the act. Isn't this too restrictive? Our ethics would justify the continued freedom of the neighbor on the grounds that we were protecting the dignity of the rapist. If this is what being dignitarian entails, something seems to have gone very wrong here.

To begin with, there is the point to be made that the dignity of the neighbor is moot in this case. Common sense would say, "To hell with dignity. He's not going to do it again." Probably, what would happen in an anarcho-socialist society is that the couple would get a bunch of their friends together with a couple of hunting rifles and end the rapist's life. This act of vigilante justice highlights the point that has been made repeatedly in this discussion about the Hobbesian state of nature, but for me that is not what I would like to focus on.

In your essay, you give the example of a famous case where a person asked that he be killed and eaten by a cannibal. One possible response you give that a dignitarian ethicist can make is that the victim was engaged in an immoral act, and hence, from a dignitarian conception, that force might be legitimately used to protect the victim from immediate harm due to himself. The final "and hence" and the inference I make that follows is not stated in your article, but it is a possible one to make. Before returning to it, let us first get a few preliminary matters out of the way.

What I would like to turn to now is your definition of dignitarianism as given in the self-defense article. Namely, you state that the dignity of the individual is defined as the inherent moral value of every individual that cannot be lessened through bad acts or increased through good acts. Since this definition is so important, let us quote from the article:

"Now dignitarianism, and especially the broadly Kantian version of it, says

(i) that everyone, everywhere, has absolute, non-denumerable, non-instrumental, innate moral value, aka dignity, simply by virtue of their being persons (i.e., conscious, caring, cognizing, self-conscious rational animals with a further capacity for free will), and that dignity is - or at the very least, can be regarded as - a fundamental, irreducible, and therefore primitively given feature of persons that cannot either be erased by any bad actions or good habits of character, and

(ii) that everyone, everywhere ought to treat themselves and everyone else with sufficient respect for their dignity."

The definition appeals to inherent moral value that cannot be taken away from or increased. Logically, if moral value cannot increase or decrease, that fact would apply to the aggressor as well as the victim. In the example I just gave, the rapist's inherent moral value is not affected when he commits rape, and neither is the husband's inherent moral value affected when he murders the rapist. So too, for the victim. The wife's inherent moral value is not affected by virtue of being raped, and the rapist's inherent moral value is not affected by being murdered. So what does it matter then if rape or murder happens at all? Perhaps I am missing something here, but if this conclusion is not a valid one, it remains to be explained what place morality plays if the moral value of all those involved remains unchanged. Justice is practiced when we recognize when one person's moral value, or desert, differs from that of another, and act accordingly. I hope I am not being too superficial here, and if I am, that someone would point out where I have gone wrong.

I would like to suggest that, instead of focusing on dignity, which has some Kantian foundations that I am ill-equipped to address, we simply focus on moral worth, which on our revised conception, can change and be different between different people, especially in light of different situations.

To return to the real-life example about the cannibal, Robert has already mentioned that the victim's decision to be killed and eaten can be criticized on the grounds that the victim wishes to engage in an immoral act. Surely, we would be justified in stopping the victim from following through with his decision. Wouldn't we also be justified even if it wasn't a crisis situation where use of force was a last resort that had to be deployed? If that is the case, aren't we similarly protecting the moral worth of other women when we lock up the rapist, and even more interestingly, aren't we protecting the moral worth of the rapist when we ensure he will not commit rape again?

This goes to the heart of what you are discussing about coercive institutions. If institutions such as courts of law, jails, and policing can help guarantee the moral worth of individuals that their absence cannot, wouldn't it be ill advised to simply dismiss these aspects of the state as simply coercive without any redeeming value whatsoever?

Thanks so much! for those further thoughts, Allen.

There are many important points raised here!, but to keep things fairly brief, I'll focus on just three.

First, re your rape example, I think it's important, when we're evaluating the implications of political thought-experiments involving a particular political doctrine or theory, to distinguish between

(i) ideal conditions according to that doctrine or theory, i.e., conditions of full compliance to that doctrine or theory, &

(ii) non-ideal conditions, i.e., conditions in which there isn't full compliance.

Now if we're evaluating the rape thought-experiment for dignitarian anarcho--socialism under (i) or ideal conditions, then the answer is that such acts just wouldn't happen, since everyone in such a world is choosing & acting in such a way as to sufficiently respect everyone else's dignity.

But if even when we evaluate the rape thought-experiment under (ii) or non-ideal conditions, then it's also clear that since the larger society is dignitarian anarcho-socialist, if & when rapes did indeed happen, then as long as rapists showed an active propensity to violate people's dignity in that way, then they'd have to be detained as long as they were a real threat, so that innocent people would be protected.

But there wouldn't be any lynching or retributive punishment morally permitted in a dignitarian anarcho-socialist society, since that's coercive & also of course you can't go back in time & change bad choices or acts by punishing bad people after the fact.

Nor would there be torture, etc., since that violates the bad person's dignity.

Nor would there be capital punishment, since that also violates the bad person's dignity.

Nevertheless, since in a dignitarian anarcho-socialist framework, people have free will & moral responsibility, then of course everyone should also take full responsibility for their bad choices & acts; & if some sort of reasonable redress or recompense for the victims of our bad acts is possible, then we ought to do that, etc., but above all we should try to change our lives for the better.

Second, respecting bad people's dignity doesn't imply morally permitting those bad people to choose & do evil things.

Wrong choices & wrong acts are morally impermissible, so it's obligatory not to choose them or do them.

More generally, in a dignitarian moral framework, moral principles & their applications solely concern our intentions & our conduct, & presuppose our dignity.

Third, in a dignitarian moral & political framework it's fully respecting the dignity of bad people that we're permitted to use minimal effective force as a last resort in cases of self-defense & in order to protect innocent others.

And if that involves detaining bad people until we've judged them not to be threats to us or other innocent people, whose dignity we must defend & protect, then that's also fully respecting the bad people's dignity, since we're not coercing them in any way, e.g., lynching them, applying retributive punishment to them, torturing them, or executing them....

Hi Robert. I am glad we agree on this point. In the interest of continued dialogue, however, I would like to suggest that one part of your argument you may want to revise is your account of coercion. Somehow, this discussion keeps returning to Hobbes, but I would be rather left at sea if I had to discuss Hobbes' influential treatment of coercion in the Leviathan. I am going to rely on Google instead, which defines coercion as "the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats." Ultimately, what the state does to get its way is to use either force or threats, and what detaining a rapist or a murderer entails is the use of force or threats. One needn't view such coercion as punishment, nor does one need to kill or torture the individual in question. One is nevertheless coercing the offender.

What I am trying to do is not to make a narrowly pedantic point about definitions, but to make a point about your overarching project: if the problem we have with coercion is simply excessive coercion, such as gratuitous levels of force employed for the sake of punishment, or otherwise torturing or killing people, then maybe what we are seeking is not the dissolution of the state and its monopoly on certain forms of threats or force, but simply the reform of the state so that it is more humane. The state would still possess the means of coercion at its disposal to deal with non-ideal situations that would inevitably arise. Since you seem to insist that institutions would still exist in an anarcho-socialist society, maybe realism dictates that coercion (as I have described it) would still be part of what makes these institutions effective, in both the anarcho-socialist society you have described and in our own imperfect one.

Robert wrote (#32): "And if that involves detaining bad people until we've judged them not to be threats to us or other innocent people, whose dignity we must defend & protect, then that's also fully respecting the bad people's dignity, since we're not coercing them in any way,"

In the absence of courts and police, who decides when someone is guilty of rape, assault, and other offenses we now deem criminal, and who enforces that decision? Or are there courts and police in an anarcho-socialist society and, if so, who establishes them and under what authority?

I added to my preceding comment after originally posting it. This brings me to another question: are there laws in an anarcho-socialist society defining offenses subject to detention, and, if so, who formulates these laws and under what authority?

My questions are probably answered in your extensive writings on political philosophy, but, as previously mentioned, I don't have time right now to read them (as distinguished from your writings on free will and ethics, which I plan to read soon).

It seems to me that one link between the law and the dignitarian principle is the presumption of innocence.

Thanks so much for your comments & questions, Allen, Alan, & Robert.

Re Allen's comments, for the moment I want to bracket the issue of my use or definition of the term "coercion" or the concept of coercion.

I think I can justify that use or definition, & we can come back to that issue, but I also think that at the moment it's a distraction from the fundamental points I'm arguing for, which can be formulated in slightly more general way that don't rely on the concept of coercion, or indeed on Kantian ethics, specifically.

E.g., essentially the same argument I'm going to present has also been used by Michael Huemer in The Problem of Political Authority,--

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781...

& not only does he not rely specifically on the concept of coercion, also he's far from being a Kantian either in ethics or politics.

Anyhow, here's the argument.

1. Is it morally permissible for governments/States to do things to individuals (e.g., compel them to pay taxes, arrest them on suspicion of wrongdoing, incarcerate them for long periods of time, execute them, compel them to swear oaths of allegiance, compel them to serve in the army, etc. etc.), that it would be morally impermissible for individuals to do to each other?

2. If you answer "yes" to (1), then you're a Statist, but if you answer "no" to (1), then you're a philosophical anarchist.

3. Assuming that you've answered "no" to (1), then, using the same set of moral principles (which could, e.g., simply be a set of common sense moral intuitions), is it also morally permissible to defend yourself or innocent others from attacks by bad people, even if sometimes it involves using physical force?

4. The view I'm proposing answers "no" to (1) & "yes" to (3), & there's no inconsistency in holding that view.

So what's of fundamental importance is whether you answer "yes" or "no" to 1, & for what reasons....

Re Alan's questions, no there aren't laws or courts, etc., in an anarcho-socialist world, although there are moral & political principles & rules that people collectively freely agree to abide by, & the social institutions created & sustained by these agreements, & collective decisions they make, & the process of coming to agreement & to decisions & then collective acts flowing from those decisions, & it's all directly democratic, fully voluntary, & dignity-respecting; & people who, having participated in that process, still disagree with or dissent from those principles or rules aren't punished or forced to heed them, although of course if the disagree-ers or dissenters attack you or the other innocent people who've come to those agreements, then you & the other parties to the agreement can also defend yourself/themselves or those innocent others against the attackers.

Of course, everything turns here on the directly democratic, fully voluntary, dignity-respecting process by which we can come to such agreements, & I've proposed a theory of that process in Kant, Agnosticism, & Anarchism,, section 2.10.

And it's partially based on accounts of participatory decision-making & multi-party principled negotiation that quite a few other people have also proposed or actually used for decision-making & coming to agreements in business, politics, & negotiation-situations more generally.

See, e.g., the Australian organization Loomio--

https://help.loomio.org/en/user_manua...

But of course my version of the theory would have to be empirically tested by small & large groups of people, in order to see whether it actually works or not....

Re Robert's comment, yes, absolutely, the application of laws in liberal democratic States generally presume innocence, which is a dignitarian idea.

And to the extent that States actually develop & implement dignitarian ideas, then they're morally better than other States that don't.

So if one were to see moral progress in the history of States, then it would be in the direction of dignitarianism.

And in that light, one could see my dignitarian anarcho-socialist proposal as the historical moral end-goal or telos of dignitarian improvements in States, whereby States themselves would ultimately wither away....

Robert wrote: "Thanks so much for your comments & questions, Allen, Alan, & Robert.

Re Allen's comments, for the moment I want to bracket the issue of my use or definition of the term "coercion" or the concept o..."

Hi Robert. I'm curious what you think about another example, where an institution seemingly must coerce people to do something, without anyone being under physical danger. I genuinely don't know what you will say, which is why I am asking.

Let us suppose in your anarcho-socialist society a group of people decided they hated literacy. Their goal as a social movement is to eliminate all reading from society. To that end, they want to get rid of all printed media, including the internet and books. They commit arson on libraries, organize book burnings, and sabotage the existing worker-owned enterprises that manage the internet. The movement spreads through radio, which everyone uses. They are very careful not to hurt anyone.

Wouldn't common sense suggest we do something to stop them? The burned books include things like philosophy and books about anarcho-socialism. Wouldn't you have a stake in preventing them from continuing, by force or threats if necessary?

Robert wrote (#37): "Thanks so much for your comments & questions, Allen, Alan, & Robert"

Your ideas about anarcho-socialism are certainly interesting, and I look forward to reading your writings on political philosophy when I can get to them.

In the meantime and provisionally, please forgive my Madisonian skepticism about the practicability of the project, though it may very well serve as an eventual aspirational goal—perhaps achievable in some future century but not anytime during the next several decades. In this sense, it may be your answer to Plato’s Republic: something for theoretical inquiry and reflection but not something that could be immediately implemented. In other words, it is certainly a legitimate subject of political philosophy (in the original sense of the concept) regardless of whether it can be accomplished on the ground.

So the following are my provisional objections, which, again, I recognize are insufficiently founded on an actual reading and study of your political philosophy writings:

1. You appear to accept the notion of the perfectibility of human beings in the tradition of Rousseau and Marx. I have grave doubts about that premise, especially when I look around at the facts on the ground during the entirety of human history, including but not limited to all of American history and particularly including our own time. We must also not forget what happened when Rousseauian and Marxist ideas were attempted to be practiced on the ground—the bloody, totalitarian French and Russian revolutions, respectively. Although I long ago cast aside the dogma of original sin, I think that James Madison’s secular, albeit neo-Puritan, understanding of the facts of human nature (based, in part, on his observation of the chaos and majority tyranny in the anarchic state governments during the “critical period” between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of 1787) and his construction—with the assistance and sometimes modification of other Framers and with the subsequent adoption and ratification of Amendments 1-10, 13-15, 17, 19, 22, 26, 28, and perhaps some other, more institutional amendments—of the Constitution were basically correct. That said, Madison, like Jefferson, was something of a coward on the issue of slavery, recognizing that it was unjust, but unable to liberate himself and his slaves in practice. I also don’t agree with Madison’s apparent acceptance of what we would now call “neoliberal” (then, just “liberal”) capitalism, but it must be remembered that Madison and Jefferson lived before the Industrial Revolution and had no idea how industrialization would change everything. Then, of course, there was Madison’s and Jefferson’s commitment to westward expansion, without adequate consideration of what such expansion would mean for Amerindians. Slavery and the unjust treatment of Amerindians were indeed the “original sins” of American history, and the consequences of those injustices are still with us, even though we have made some—but not enough—progress in overcoming these evils. So I take the good parts of Madison’s teachings, exemplified to some extent in his contributions to The Federalist (especially, with some reservations, Federalist No. 10), and reject the bad.

2. Accordingly, I have had little faith in “participatory democracy” ever since the New Left activists raised that banner in the 1960s. I remember well the use of that slogan when New Left activists forcibly took over the Administration Building of the University of Chicago for two weeks when I was a student there. I’m not sure what participatory democracy would mean on the ground in an anarcho-socialist society as you contemplate it, but the very notion smacks of the majority tyranny and incompetence against which Madison railed in Federalist No. 10 and elsewhere. What prevents such participatory democracy from quickly devolving into the very evils that characterized the French and Russian revolutions, for example? In the absence of laws, it seems to me we would end up with “tribunal justice” in which the “vanguard of the proletariat” would adjudicate, without any legal standards or constitutional protection of individual rights, whose head would be chopped off today. This reminds me of the proposal of many on the political Right and some on the political Left for a new constitutional convention—something Madison opposed notwithstanding the demands of the Antifederalists. Such a new constitutional convention could well result in a negative modification of the Bill of Rights as well as the constitutional implementation of neoliberalism. In short, I think there is a significant risk that participatory democracy would result in the very evils you oppose.

3. The present political system is far from perfect, and it is becoming less so under the aegis of Trumpism—a populist movement that might well take over the institutions of participatory democracy or, indeed, a new constitutional convention. With Hamlet, I am inclined to “rather bear those ills we have / Than fly to others that we know not of.” That said, we definitely should attempt to improve the present situation—with, I submit, evolution, not revolution.

4. Let me close the present comment by addressing your queries (my responses are in brackets): “Is it morally permissible for governments/States to do things to individuals (e.g., compel them to pay taxes [yes, under present and foreseeably future circumstances], arrest them on suspicion of wrongdoing [yes, with probable cause pursuant to the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution], incarcerate them for long periods of time [a complicated question involving difficult matters of criminal law and dependent on particular circumstances, though I would decriminalize the possession of marijuana and other forbidden drugs and free those who have been imprisoned for such offenses], execute them [no], compel them to swear oaths of allegiance [no], compel them to serve in the army [no], etc. etc. [you probably include governmentally imposed religious requirements, which I adamantly oppose: see my book The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience]), that it would be morally impermissible for individuals to do to each other?”

So I will be quite interested in reading your writings on political philosophy, though, at least for now, I have the foregoing objections to what I understand to be your doctrine of anarcho-socialism. It is possible, if not probable, that my current understanding and evaluation will be modified upon such reading. And perhaps I will study your proposals in a similar light as the way I study Plato’s Republic—as an illumination of the nature of human ethics and politics, regardless of its practicability.

In post #37, Robert poses a series of questions, then concludes, "4. The view I'm proposing answers `no' to (1) & `yes' to (3), & there's no inconsistency in holding that view."

I agree that there is no inconsistency. What there is, it seems to me, is a return to the Lockean state of nature.

More many thanks!, Allen, Alan, & Robert, as always, for your further thoughts & critical worries.

Since they're all extremely interesting, I'll reply to each one, but in three separate posts (including this one) so that I don't over-run the word/characters limit for any single post.

Re Allen's thought-experiment, & follow-up query in #38:

Let us suppose in your anarcho-socialist society a group of people decided they hated literacy. Their goal as a social movement is to eliminate all reading from society. To that end, they want to get rid of all printed media, including the internet and books. They commit arson on libraries, organize book burnings, and sabotage the existing worker-owned enterprises that manage the internet. The movement spreads through radio, which everyone uses. They are very careful not to hurt anyone.

Wouldn't common sense suggest we do something to stop them? The burned books include things like philosophy and books about anarcho-socialism. Wouldn't you have a stake in preventing them from continuing, by force or threats if necessary?

I have three follow-up thoughts about this extremely interesting thought-experiment, which is a kind-of reversed Fahrenheit 451 scenario, in which the anarcho-socialist rebels, not the totalitarian government, are the book-burners.

First, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I think it's important to frame political thought-experiments in a way that's sensitive to the distinction between (i) ideal conditions of full compliance to the normative principles of that political organization, & (ii) non-ideal conditions of partial compliance.

So if we evaluate this thought-experiment under (i), ideal conditions of full compliance, then my answer is that since the anarcho-socialism I'm proposing is dignitarian & in pursuit of radical enlightenment, then none of them would ever reject literacy & reading, so this situation would never arise.

Second, if we then evaluate the thought-experiment under (ii), non-ideal conditions of partial compliance, we also have to be careful not to introduce a scenario that violates a presupposition of the thought-experiment, namely that the overall society is assumed to be dignitarian anarcho-socialist.

And a crucial presupposition of dignitarian anarcho-socialism is that people are not inherently self-interested & mutually antagonistic, & that therefore they're not deterministic decision-theoretic moist robots who would engage in a war of all against all in the state of nature: that's precisely the classical liberal Statist cognitive illusion I'm denying.

On the contrary, dignitarian anarcho-socialism presupposes that people are somewhat altruistic, somewhat inclined towards social solidarity & mutual aid, possess free will, & are at least somewhat capable of non-instrumental rationality.

So if, in the thought-experiment, one imaginatively projected a group of people who were inherently self-interested & mutually antagonistic, & (in effect) deterministic decision-theoretic moist robots, then that would violate a presupposition of the political organization I'm talking about.

Therefore, since we're talking about a dignitarian anarcho-socialist society, then no one in this society is inherently self-interested or anti-social or a deterministic decision-theoretic moist robot, hence they would be somewhat open to rational discussion & being convinced by good reasons, even if they had wrongheadedly decided to be book-burners.

Moreover, since the overall society is dignitarian anarcho-socialist, & since social institutions at least partially shape the people who belong to them, then it seems to me that even if a some people decided to be book-burners, it would be a very small group, & not very worrisome, especially in view of the fact that they're very careful not to hurt anyone.

Third, then, my response to Allen's question is this: Although I'd/we'd of course try to convince them that book-burning isn't a rationally justifiable (even if it's morally permissible, since no one's dignity is being violated) act, no I/we wouldn't try to stop them by using force.

More generally, I think it's important to distinguish, as Martin Luther King Jr did, between (a) violence against people & (b) violence against property in pursuit of important dignitarian goals.

Non-violence in King's sense forbids (a) but permits (b), & I agree.

So although I certainly wouldn't endorse the book-burners' project, because it's rationally unjustified, nevertheless, because that project is not strictly immoral although it's wrong-headed, & since there would only be a few of them, then the property damage wouldn't be terribly problematic, & could be tolerated by the rest of us.

Relatedly & in stark contrast, I think it's important to recognize an important feature of Statism, which is that because it's coercive & authoritarian, then governments & ruling elites more generally have a strong tendency to fall into "elite panic" at the slightest sign of dissent, & crack down hard, with excessive force & indeed outright violence, on small groups of protesters, in order to show them "who's boss" & above all in order to strike fear into the hearts of any others who might happen to agree with the protesters.

But that's not generally or even usually going to happen in a dignitarian anarcho-socialist society, even under non-ideal conditions of only partial compliance, for otherwise this would violate the presupposition that it's dignitarian anarcho-socialist....

In this post, I'm going to reply briefly to Robert W's brief comment, & then come back a little later today to Alan's much longer post, which will of course require a longer reply.

Robert W. wrote:

In post #37, Robert poses a series of questions, then concludes, "4. The view I'm proposing answers `no' to (1) & `yes' to (3), & there's no inconsistency in holding that view."

I agree that there is no inconsistency. What there is, it seems to me, is a return to the Lockean state of nature.

We're in agreement that there's no inconsistency, so nothing to follow-up on there.

But I do think that the conclusion that in a dignitarian anarcho-socialist society there would be a return to a "Lockean state of nature," which is essentially the same as the Hobbesian state of nature, is in effect just a re-assertion of the classical liberal Statist cognitive illusion I'm rejecting.

Of course I could be mistaken about that!, but I've also provided various reasons (several of them empirically well-grounded, so not just a priori considerations) earlier in this thread for holding that the the classical liberal Statist myth is indeed just a myth, although obviously I won't deny its powerful & tenacious grip on most people's minds.

Otherwise, dignitarian anarcho-socialism wouldn't seem so "crazy" & shocking to most people.

After all, we've all been brought up in States & constantly subject to their ideological hegemony since birth, so how could that fail to have all sorts of adverse cognitive effects on most of us?

Not an intellectual myself, I hesitate to join these discussions. Based on my understanding of the human species gleaned from four decades working in Corporate America, participation in political and volunteer groups, and reading about primate evolution, it would seem that massive genetic modification on the populace would be necessary to achieve a "dignitarian anarcho-socialist" society.

Humans do have a tendency to cooperate and to feel empathy, otherwise we would not have come to dominate the entire planet. But we also have downsides, namely tendencies to be selfish, self-righteous, xenophobic, clannish, and sometimes cruel if it makes us feel better. Utopias are fun to think about, but I hope the Utopian philosophers will attempt to match their dream worlds with actual human biology.

I am an optimist about humanity in general (see my non-intellectual essay here) but not so much when I consider the behavior of some of my own acquaintances.

Fire and Ice by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Ice it is.

Thanks so much! for those follow-up thoughts, Mimi.

Re: Based on my understanding of the human species gleaned from four decades working in Corporate America, participation in political and volunteer groups, and reading about primate evolution, it would seem that massive genetic modification on the populace would be necessary to achieve a "dignitarian anarcho-socialist" society.

Humans do have a tendency to cooperate and to feel empathy, otherwise we would not have come to dominate the entire planet. But we also have downsides, namely tendencies to be selfish, self-righteous, xenophobic, clannish, and sometimes cruel if it makes us feel better. Utopias are fun to think about, but I hope the Utopian philosophers will attempt to match their dream worlds with actual human biology.

I am an optimist about humanity in general (see my non-intellectual essay here) but not so much when I consider the behavior of some of my own acquaintances.

I completely agree with you! that everyone is somewhat egoistic & somewhat mutually antagonistic, not to mention frequently coercive & apt to violate our own human dignity & that of others.

But I disagree that it's a matter of biology or human history that we're naturally or inevitably that way, which I think is an essential part of what I've been calling "the cognitive myth of classical liberal Statism."

So, on the contrary, it's the non-egoistic & socially cooperative side of human nature that I'm arguing for, & insisting on, & drawing on in my arguments--in effect, drawing on what you called your "optimis[m] about humanity in general," although I've also combined that with a fairly strong & updated version of Kant's dignitarian ethics.

Now I'm going to repeat some of what I wrote in an earlier post, between the rows of asterisks, since I think it's directly relevant.

***
To summarize, what I'm arguing is--

(i) that it's not true that rational human animals are egoistic/self-interested & mutually antagonistic as a matter of natural necessity or historical inevitability, & furthermore

(ii) it's equally false that the State is rationally justified & morally right in coercing us for our own good, lest we fall back into a state of nature & a catastrophic war of all against all.

Of course I'll agree that people can be egoistic/self-interested & mutually antagonistic, & that as a matter of actual fact some people are very egoistic & anti-social, most of the time.

But then no one has to be this way, i.e., no sane rational human animal is essentially this way, & an updated Kantian ethics, if sound, shows

(i) that not only ought we to choose & act in a way that non-egoistic & altruistic, & to treat everyone including ourselves with sufficient respect for their rational human dignity, but also we really can do this, not to mention

(ii) that it's rationally unjustified & immoral to treat people as mere means or mere things, e.g., by coercion, but that's what States are set up to do, so States are inherently rationally justified & immoral.

And this isn't just philosophical unicorns & cloud cuckoo land!

I think it's an empirical fact that most people are altruistic at least some of the time, & that some people are actually extremely altruistic (although we may reasonably wonder whether such extreme altruism is morally required of us).

That's demonstrated in this very good recent book by Larissa MacFarquhar, Strangers Drowning--

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...

Moreover, the Yale political anthropologist J.C. Scott in his equally excellent recent book Against the Grain, shows as a matter of empirical fact that for 4000 years before the earliest States, life was neither a war of all against all, nor nasty, brutish, & short, & that folks lived in various kinds of reasonably complex & stable, although not sedentary, social arrangements--

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/97803...

And in her also equally excellent 2009 book, A Paradise Built in Hell--

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...

Rebecca Solnit also shows as a matter of empirical fact that when natural or social disasters cause a temporary breakdown in State structures & control, people are at least as likely spontaneously to cooperate & show solidarity in mutually beneficial ways, as they are to act egoistically & mutually antagonistically.

So I do think that my view is empirically & conceptually well-supported, even if it's "out there" & counter-orthodox...
***

And I'll just finish by noting that there's also significant biological evidence for holding that, e.g., social cooperativeness is innate, as, e.g., Michael Tomasello has argued in Why We Cooperate--

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/why-we...

In my post #40, for purposes of clarity, I should have added that to leave Locke's state of nature, you need to say "yes" to some version of Robert's question #1 in his post #37: "1. Is it morally permissible for governments/States to do things to individuals . . . that it would be morally impermissible for individuals to do to each other?"

I should have also added a comment to Robert's "yes" answer to his question in #3:

3. Assuming that you've answered "no" to (1), then, using the same set of moral principles (which could, e.g., simply be a set of common sense moral intuitions), is it also morally permissible to defend yourself or innocent others from attacks by bad people, even if sometimes it involves using physical force?

Note that even if you say "yes" to #1, you can still use self-defense as a legal argument to defend yourself in the courtroom. You have the right to self-defense to Locke's state of nature and you keep this right when you leave the state of nature, along with many other rights.

Robert wrote: "Thanks so much! for those follow-up thoughts, Mimi.

Re: Based on my understanding of the human species gleaned from four decades working in Corporate America, participation in political and volunt..."

Thanks for taking the time to reply. There is biological evidence that social cooperativeness is innate, but on what scale? We are cooperative with those in our "in-group" but not so much with the other tribe.

In "Sapiens", https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humank..., Yuval Noah Harari points out that as long as we were hunter-gatherers living in small roaming bands, life was fairly peaceful. If we encountered another band we could just go our separate ways because the forest and savanna had plenty of room for everyone.

After the Agricultural Revolution, forget it. There was no walking away when you owned land, homes and crops. If you didn't stand and fight, the other guy would take over. Life in small agricultural villages became very violent, with frequent wars and cannibalism. Agriculture provided plenty of food (although the food quality decreased from hunter-gathering times) and also caused large centers of population to form.

According to Harari, sociological research shows that the threshold above which we cannot keep order without formal governance is around 150 human beings.

"But once the threshold of 150 individuals is crossed, things can no longer work that way. You cannot run a division with thousands of soldiers the same way you run a platoon."

Above 150 individuals, we keep order by accepting common myths.

"There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings."

Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (p. 28). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

I haven't read your work, but you seem to be saying that we need to shed the "myth" that our overpopulated planet needs state control of any kind.

I have read science fiction stories where the primary unit of human governance was local - perhaps the size of a small city. That would be middle ground between the huge states that we have and your notion of people just "getting along" as individuals.

As long as we are living in groups of more than 150 people, there must be some formal laws that we can agree about and some way to administer justice. Human nature (mostly in our DNA, with an overlay of social training and reasoning) is formed of both angels and devils. If you have time, please read my essay linked above, where I explain it better.

Thanks.

Note to All: For those who don't already know, Mimi and I are married to each other. We don't agree on all issues, but we have complementary views on this one. For example, she is much more knowledgeable regarding evolutionary biology than I.

Alan wrote:

In the meantime and provisionally, please forgive my Madisonian skepticism about the practicability of the project, though it may very well serve as an eventual aspirational goal—perhaps achievable in some future century but not anytime during the next several decades. In this sense, it may be your answer to Plato’s Republic: something for theoretical inquiry and reflection but not something that could be immediately implemented. In other words, it is certainly a legitimate subject of political philosophy (in the original sense of the concept) regardless of whether it can be accomplished on the ground.

Actually, I'd be quite happy, as a pretty good interim philosophical outcome, for people to accept my project as "an eventual aspirational goal," i.e., as a regulative moral Idea in Kant's sense: that's a start.

Of course, the best outcome would be for people to be fully onboard with it right now, but we shouldn't let the best be the enemy of the good, as I think Voltaire pointed out.

In any case, as to Alan's four comments.

Re 1: I'm far from being either a Rousseauian or a Marxian about human perfectibility!, much less a Marxist, except perhaps a Groucho Marxist.

But I do think that we can significantly reduce the distance between ourselves & the ideal ethical & political condition, if we try wholeheartedly.

Re 2: Although my project shares a few similarities with some of the ideas held by the New Left, I'm as critical of the New Left as you are, & fully aware of the failures of that movement, for basically the same reasons spelled out by Michael Kazin in chs. 6-7 of American Deamers: How the Left Changed a Nation--

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...

But in any case, since the dignitarian anarcho-socialist conception of participatory decision-making & principled negiotation that I'm proposing is essentially guided by dignitarian moral principles, if it were actually implemented, then it would be sharply contrary to tyranny of any kind, including the tyranny of the majority, the tyranny of the minority, the tyranny of the rich, the tyranny of some racial or ethnic elite, etc., etc.

But it may be that you're not disagreeing with the idea that if dignitarian anarcho-socialism were implemented by humanity, either with either ideal or full compliance, or with non-ideal partial compliance, then it would be very good thing, much better than what we have now, or perhaps even the best thing for humanity: you might be disagreeing only with the claim that it could ever actually be implemented.

To which I would reply: "OK, but since you've admitted that in principle it's very good or even the best, then why not try it right now?"

And if you replied: "No way, we couldn't possibly try it right now, because human nature would have to be biologically modified for it to happen, etc. etc.," then I think that then we're just back to the same old cognitive illusion I've been arguing against....

Re 3: I'm certainly not a revolutionary!, & I've explicitly argued against that & in favor of a devolutionary approach to the State & a simultaneously constructive, social-institution-building, step-by-step approach to implementing dignitarian anarcho-socialism, in parts 2 & 3 of Kant, Agnosticism, & Anarchism--

https://www.academia.edu/36359665/The...

& other books, especially The Mind-Body Politic--

https://www.academia.edu/38764188/The...

& various essays.

So when you say "we definitely should attempt to improve the present situation—with, I submit, evolution, not revolution," we may not actually be fundamentally disagreeing at all, although perhaps differing superficially in our terminology & rhetorical emphasis, especially if you were to allow for the eventual withering away of the State & the simutaneous emergence of a global dignitarian anarcho-socialist community as an "eventual aspirational goal" of the political evolution you've mentioned.

Re 4: Finally, since you answer "yes, it's morally permissible" to only two of the examples I provided in which the State does things to individuals that it's morally impermissible for individuals to do to each other--i.e., compelling people to pay taxes & arresting people on suspicion of wrongdoing--I conclude, as per 3, that we're not actually all that far apart in our views, especially when it's recognized, as I've emphasized, that dignitarian anarcho-socialism is a devolutionary/constructive long term project, not a revolutionary project.

One might say: dignitarian anarcho-socialism requires a cognitive revolution in our moral & political thinking, & also a radical change of heart corresponding to that cognitive revolution--so the cognitive revolution naturally carries with it an emotional liberation--but in no way a violent political revolution in the sense of the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, or the Chinese Revolution, not to mention the American Revolution....

Robert wrote: "More many thanks!, Allen, Alan, & Robert, as always, for your further thoughts & critical worries.

Since they're all extremely interesting, I'll reply to each one, but in three separate posts (inc..."

Hi Robert. I've so far only read your immediate response to my post, so if anyone else brings up a salient argument, I would have missed it. I will go back and read what else has been written later in the day.

What you have written answers my question, but before we get to that, I want to address an ancillary point that you open with in your rebuttal, which states that the entire society would necessarily be dignitarian in its anarcho-socialistic commitments, and hence the situation I describe would not arise, for the purposes of this thought experiment.

That is one way to respond to the thought-experiment, but I think there are some things that I can say in response. For example, I might infer from your response that your whole conception of an anarcho-socialistic society is itself simply a thought-experiment, and that in your work you don't intend such a society as a model for an actual society. In other words, if you can simply puncture our unexamined faith in the statist presuppositions of our world, that would be enough for you. If that is all you are doing, as I have said, I agree with the goal you have set yourself, since as far as I am concerned, you have succeeded admirably.

However, one thing I have been led to believe in our discussion (I will not quote previous posts) is that you actually believe anarcho-socialism is the basis for a sustainable political order. It is here that I have to disagree, because if anarcho-socialism is to be the plausible basis for an actual political order, it must necessarily be able to handle non-ideal situations. Based on what you have said, I have an idea of how such a society would handle such situations. I am skeptical that it is realistic, but such an attitude, which I will get into later, is consistent with everything you have said and summarizes your response to my objections. I don't think it is a convincing response, but I believe I understand what your solution is to the problems I have posed.

The reason why I brought up the book burning example is because it is motivated by what I have observed over the years interacting with people over the internet. There are people who I have spoken with on anime and video game message boards who would be content to spend the rest of their lives watching manipulative, sentimental cartoons and playing video games. Some of these people are genuine proto-anarchists because they recognize no authority, which is fine you might say. But what should be of concern even to you is that this anti-authoritarianism is consistent with their irrationalism. They do not accept the role of reason as a mediator of conflict. Interestingly, they believe that it is people who use reason that are manipulative and coercive, while the corporations - who make the cheesy, vapid cartoons they watch well into adulthood - these corporations are the ones who set them free. It is a rather stark inversion of what we usually think of as manipulative or not. These people are genuine misologists, and resist any attempt at rational persuasion. I am not sure about this, but I think if you were to read the things they post you would be concerned for our future.

For me, it is frankly terrifying. If Andrew Yang and Yuval Noah Harari are right, and the state gets into the business of supporting people in the absence of job opportunities, I have reason to believe that people such as those I have described will only increase in number. I have mentioned in this discussion group before that Donald Trump's successful campaign represents the triumph of orality over the traditional norms of printed media, and his unusual charisma would only have been a factor in our political elections where the mediascape that could transmit his inimitable physical presence faithfully, with all the nuances of vocal inflection and gesture. I think we have only seen the beginning of this ascendancy of orality, and that its implications will be more far-reaching than what we have seen only in the last four years. I would like to be wrong, and for what you might describe as my elite pearl-clutching to be completely baseless and unwarranted.

I know you are no fan of the social justice left, and may even be gratified by the anti-establishment pushback that currently exists against it on the internet. The internet has always been a haven against this kind of pushback against orthodoxy. Before the social justice left, what people on the internet loved to oppose were moralizing Christians. In your ideal anarcho-socialistic utopia, if Kant becomes the new orthodoxy, I have no doubt that what the marginalized will love doing more than anything is mocking his brand of idealism and commitment to reason - that is, if something like the internet exists and people are free to say what they really think.

It is a mistake to believe that Modernity necessarily leads to any ideal political order, whether that be constitutional monarchy or liberal democracy if Hegelians are to be believed. In its willingness to question everything, what Modernity ultimately entails in the political sphere is the unrivaled opportunity for bold new experiments in social engineering that test the viability of political arrangements that are genuinely new, or so old that they might as well be new. Anarcho-socialism is one such genuine alternative, and it is because I take it seriously that I question its basic commitments and am concerned about its possible outcomes. I think you may be right that in an actual anarcho-socialist society there will only be isolated acts of book burning or what have you, and that the situation I describe, massive opposition to literacy, is not really plausible. But the anti-intellectual commitments I have described that are likely to be held by at least some anarchists are likely also to lead to other examples of social unrest that would pit different interests of society against one another. What I am trying to do with the thought-experiment is to suggest that the conflict between these interests is unavoidable, and will ultimately require coercion, by someone, somehow, to resolve.

I think coercion by the state and by economic necessity are powerfully constitutive of false consciousness. But unlike Marx and his followers, I don't think this is a bad thing. I have not read Marx's original works to address all the nuances of his original argument, but I think necessity is what ultimately drives cooperation among people. From false consciousness derives the shared world, creating the uniting effect of a shared enemy. I am really skeptical about your claim that spontaneous cooperation between people is possible in the absence of threats, but perhaps the best evidence for and against my argument is the internet itself. We see examples both of conflict and cooperation spontaneously arising between strangers, and I don't expect that to change in an anarcho-socialist utopia. The rebuttal that you seem to be leaning on is that everyone in this utopia will be a Kantian dignitarian, and that should solve all problems. (This is the solution I was referring to earlier.) I am really skeptical that this is possible however. Philosophers themselves disagree on just about everything, and if there is anything that can be said about the application of reason, it is that it makes disagreement the norm. The most we can hope for is that such disagreement doesn't rise to the level of force. I will have to study the many works you have cited that suggest spontaneous cooperation is the norm among human beings, even in the absence of coercion or a commonly held dignitarian ethics. That seems to be the position you are falling back on, assuming everyone is not a philosophically convinced Kantian dignitarian in this post-statist world. My attitude is overwhelmingly skeptical, but I will allow that I could be wrong, since my opinion is based on nothing more than an intuition, albeit one that is informed by practical experience and study. Alan has already described his commitments as Madisonian. If it is a position that can be summarized by Madison's famous quote - "If men were angels, no government would be necessary" - then I am in full agreement.

In light of your political commitments about the viability of a political arrangement undergirded by a Kantian dignitarianism that is broadly held, your philosophical project PWB makes a certain amount of sense. I hope it draws more enthusiastic viewers, since even though I disagree with the practicality of your anarcho-socialist views, I do think people would do well to get into the practice of thinking rationally and being honest about where their rational commitments take them.

Thank you, Bob aka Groucho, for your response (# 48).

You state: “Actually, I'd be quite happy, as a pretty good interim philosophical outcome, for people to accept my project as "an eventual aspirational goal," i.e., as a regulative moral Idea in Kant's sense: that's a start.

“Of course, the best outcome would be for people to be fully onboard with it right now, but we shouldn't let the best be the enemy of the good, as I think Voltaire pointed out.”

I’ll have to read your writings on political philosophy to ascertain whether I agree that anarcho-socialism, as you conceive it, would be “the best regime” “in speech,” as Plato and Aristotle would put it, though “regime” (πολιτεια) may not be the most accurate term for your contemplated society. But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the anarcho-socialist society would be the best society—or at least a good one that would be far better than what we know today and what we’ve known during the millennia of human history.

You also state: “OK, but since you've admitted that in principle it's very good or even the best, then why not try it right now?”

This is where I have a problem. It is my belief that a major ethical/moral transformation of human beings is necessary before such a society could ever work. You call that “the same old cognitive illusion I’ve been arguing against.” But what is the basis for your assertion that it is a cognitive illusion? I’ve cited historical examples in which utopian thinking has led in short order to the guillotine and totalitarianism. Marx’s “withering away of the state” becomes the dictatorship of the proletariat or, more precisely, the dictatorship of the vanguard of the proletariat. See George Orwell’s Animal Farm and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (my thanks to Mimi for reminding me of these works yesterday). Perhaps, as Mimi says, a truly ethical society could work for a group of 150 people or less (though her and my experience in such small groups suggest otherwise, and Madison said that the smaller the group the greater the tyranny, something borne out by my own experience representing local governments in constitutional and public law cases). But in a large, complex society like the ones we know today, I don’t see how it could work absent a major ethical/moral revolution in human attitudes and behavior. Is such a moral transformation even possible? I don’t know, but my forthcoming books on free will and human ethics are designed to give it a try. Plato and Aristotle thought it was impossible for the masses or even the leaders of the masses to become philosophic. In contrast, I have a very slight hope that such may eventually be possible, but I don’t see any way that such transformation will occur in our lifetimes and for at least many decades thereafter. To eliminate constitutional, representative democracies/republics now on the premise that such elimination will automatically bring Nirvana is, to my mind, a very dangerous program that would have disastrous results.

I opened Part III of my Master’s Essay (January 1971) on Plato’s Seventh Letter with the following epigraph:

The dispute is not now of what is absolutely best if all were new, but what is perfectly just as things now stand: It is not the Parliaments work to set up an Utopian Commonwealth, or to force the people to practise abstractions, but to make them as happy as the present frame will bear. That wise Lawgiver of old, acknowledged that he had not given his people the Laws that were absolutely best, but the best they were able to receive. The perfect return of health after sickness, is to be left to nature and time; he that will purge his body, till there remain nothing peccant, will sooner expell his life, then the cause of his sicknesse. And he that out of a desire to repaire his house, shall move all the foundations, will sooner be buried in the ruines of the old, then live to see the erection of a new structure.

“A Declaration of Some Proceedings of Lt. Col. John Lilburn,” published by the British House of Commons, February 14, 1648 (spelling and punctuation as in the original), in The Leveller Tracts, ed. William Haller and Godfrey Davies (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1944), 120.

Now, lest you think I am some kind of reactionary, I actually am and was sympathetic to the very group (the Levellers) against which this declaration was directed, which may seem to prove your point. However, the quoted statement is so precisely on point—now and back when I first used it in 1971—that I cannot and could not resist excerpting it.