"I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual." ~Murray Rothbard
The final in a series of ten lectures, ‘Strategy: Secession, Privatization, and the Prospects of Liberty’ by Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe, presented at his “Economy, Society, and History” seminar. Each lecture by Professor Hoppe presents a thorough reconstruction of the foundation of economics, social theory, and politics. Sweeping in scope and powerfully persuasive, these talks are the basis of a grand treatise in the Misesian-Rothbardian tradition. Recorded at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama; May 31-June 4, 2004. http://mises.org
Lecture presented by Hans-Hermann Hoppe at the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s “Freedom: The One Way Out” summit, held in San Francisco, California; February 9-10, 1996. http://mises.org
The stateless market society—a peaceful social arrangement based on voluntary relations among individuals in which the state is not present—is not a popular idea. Many people believe that this society would lack the capacity to define and enforce property rights, and that this would result in chaos, tyranny of the rich or in a reversal to a state. This belief has led to a widespread dismissal of the stateless society paradigm.
Murray Rothbard is by many considered the champion of the stateless society doctrine. However, even Rothbard conceded that “there can be no absolute guarantee that a purely market society would not fall prey to organized criminality.” [1]
While it is true that absolute guarantees for any social outcome are generally inappropriate, I argue that there are good reasons to believe that outcomes like chaos, tyranny of the rich, or even “organized criminality” in the absence of a state are unlikely.
To show this, I will assess the core economic forces that govern the development of any society and ultimately hold it together. This will show how the internal economic features of a stateless society provide incentives for nonviolence and cooperation and disincentives for violence, theft, and extortion. This analytical journey will also lead us to the realization that the glue that keeps state societies together in their current form may be nothing other than fear of an imagined enemy. As far as humans can overcome this fear, they can open the path to a stateless society.
“I think it is correct to say that Western Civilization has collapsed; its creative, liberating, and humanizing foundations destroyed by the collective forces of institutionalized violence. American and European countries – long the seats of Western culture – are at the end of an entropic decline. At the same time, however, I have long suspected that we are in the early stages of a transformation in thinking that is producing major changes in how we live and work with one another in society. The vertically-structured systems of centralized authority are being replaced by horizontal networks that interconnect in decentralized, voluntary ways. The Internet – which has expanded the liberating and creative capacities inhering in Gutenberg’s invention – is the most visible expression of what I think of as the “unfolding civilization.”
“It is this social transformation that is the “terror” against which the institutional order now wars. As our world reorganizes itself into peaceful and productive systems that respect the inviolability of all persons, and relies upon spontaneous and informal processes for generating order; the political systems that now dominate mankind with their powers of death, destruction, imprisonment, torture, brutality, and other forms of violence, will lose their seductive powers. “
In For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Rothbard proposes a once-and-for-all escape from the two major political parties, the ideologies they embrace, and their central plans for using state power against people. Libertarianism is Rothbard’s radical alternative that says state power is unworkable and immoral and ought to be curbed and finally overthrown.
To make his case, Rothbard deploys his entire system of thought: natural law, natural rights, Austrian economics, American history, the theory of the state, and more.
It is relentless, scientific, analytical, and morally energetic—a book that makes an overwhelming case. Indeed, it gave an entire movement its intellectual consciousness and earned Rothbard the titles “Mr. Libertarian” and “The State’s Greatest Living Enemy.”
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Presented by Bob Higgs at the 2010 Mises Institute Supporters Summit: “The Economic Recovery: Washington’s Big Lie.” Recorded in Auburn, Alabama; 9 October 2010.
First published in 1982, “The Ethics of Liberty” is a masterpiece of argumentation, and shockingly radical in its conclusions. Following up on Mises’s demonstration that a society without private property degenerates into economic chaos, Rothbard shows that every interference with property represents a violent and unethical invasion that diminishes liberty and prosperity.
