Kindle Notes & Highlights
If states lack political authority, and if weaker notions of legitimacy will not help, then the next plausible reaction might be to embrace philosophical anarchism
Philosophical anarchists acknowledge that states lack political authority, and they do not introduce a weaker notion of legitimacy, but they do not think that this is reason enough to aim at abolishing the state.
Philosophical anarchists embrace the radical philosophical claim that all states are illegitimate without drawing radical political conclusions.
Consensual states may indeed have political authority, for example; the problem simply is that there are no states that actually have the consent of the governed, and that there is no reason to be optimistic that there will be any such states in the future.
But does it really make sense to uphold that all states are illegitimate without drawing radical political conclusions?
We can think that a business does a great job, and we may be able to list its virtues, and yet this has nothing much to do with the rights that company has over us (namely none, until we sign a contract). In the same way, we can think about the virtues and vices of states without thereby saying anything about the rights they have over us (i.e. their political authority).
A first objection to philosophical anarchism is that one cannot separate the issues of the justifiability and the legitimacy or authority of a state in the same way as one can separate them in the case of companies.
Second (and relatedly), I think one can make a case for the claim that states without political authority are also unjust, which undermines their justifiability
Compare slavery. The essence of slavery is that some people, the slave-owners, have the legal power to impose legal duties on other people, namely their slaves, even though they do not have the corresponding moral power.
A lack of political authority is therefore not a minor worry, like some philosophical anarchists seem to think. It makes states deeply unjust, and thus it is hard to see how states could lack political authority but nonetheless be justified.
What is the real difference between philosophical anarchism and a weak legitimacy position? Indeed, some consequences of the two positions are identical. There is no general obligation to obey the law, since we do not have content-independent reasons to obey the law (i.e. reasons to obey the law simply because it is the law).
If the difference between philosophical anarchism and a weak legitimacy position does not lie in people’s reasons for obedience and disobedience, then the difference must lie in the state’s rights or status. On a weak account of legitimacy, the state has a liberty-right to enact and enforce laws (within certain limits).
A weak legitimacy position can say that states have the liberty-right to enact and enforce tax laws, for example, and it can deny that individual citizens have that liberty-right as well.
If states can be justified in taxing or conscripting citizens, it is hard to see why citizens should not be said to be justified in taxing or conscripting other citizens as well, on Simmons’s account
It is also hard to see why states should not be said to be justified in taxing or conscripting citizens in other states
If states lack political authority, and if a weak legitimacy position and philosophical anarchism are not viable, then it seems that one has to become a “real” anarchist, i.e. a political anarchist in contrast to a mere philosophical anarchist.
Political anarchists not only think that all states are illegitimate, they also aim at abolishing the state.
Political anarchism comes in a socialist and a capitalist version. Both reject the state, but they differ in the economic institutions they recommend for the stateless society.
I will here concentrate on the capitalist version of anarchism, or “free market anarchism”
The reason why anarchy seems unfeasible is that we cannot imagine how goods like peace, security, and law and order could be provided without the state.
Yet the market anarchist’s answer is very simple: These goods can be provided by private companies, just like any other goods and services can be provided by private companies. Note that even in our non-anarchist world security is privatized to a considerable degree.
Competing private protection companies are supposed to do the job that the police do in our countries. Maybe these companies would offer insurance schemes, such that customers paid in advance for their protection. Anarchists think that competition among protection companies would help to provide incentives for better and cheaper protection services.
Competing arbitration companies are supposed to do the job that the courts do in our countries. The product they are to offer is fair arbitration. Again, because there is competition among arbitration companies, they would have an incentive to try to provide a good service for a good price.
Political anarchists can and should be sensitive to moral side-constraints on how to bring about a better and more just social order, and making a violent revolution arguably violates those moral side-constraints. Moreover, anarchists should take care not to worsen the situation, and violent revolutions are usually hard to control.
