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The “A” Word
I confess to having deep sympathies for anarchism. I hold open the possibility and the hope that a prosperous and peaceful society can flourish without the state.

Unfortunately, the word “anarchy” has an offensive connotation. Anarchy is commonly understood to mean “lawlessness.” And lawlessness truly is offensive. A lawless society has no rules to govern behavior. It is a society in which the physically mighty and the deviously clever prey upon others. Victims of these predators suffer grievously. With security of persons and their property being precarious, a lawless society is inevitably destitute. Commerce, industry, saving, and investment don’t arise. Nor does civilization. Nearly all human effort, along with what few resources exist, is spent on plunder and on trying to protect oneself from plunder. Life is truly, to use Thomas Hobbes’s line, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Lawlessness is a curse worthy of our deepest fears.

This justified fear of lawlessness underlies most people’s assumption that the state is necessary. Most people—even many libertarians—assume that law must be supplied and enforced ultimately by the state.

I dissent. I disagree with those who say “Well, of course, the state at least must supply law and order, and protect us from violence and theft.”

What I disagree with is the “of course.” I object to the unreflective assumption that an agency with sovereign authority to use coercion—the state—is necessary. The state might indeed be necessary, but the burden of proving it ought to be on those who make the claim rather than on those who question it.

No human agency has as much blood on its hands as the state. Throughout history, states have routinely slaughtered innocent people—people outside of and within their own jurisdictions. Too many states have subjugated the masses and prevented ordinary people from trading freely and living according to their own individual lights rather than according to how the rulers wish them to live.

And modern states have raised these frightful arts to new heights. Obviously, communist and national-socialist states are most savage. But even the United States government has spilled innocent blood and tyrannized peaceful people. In the past it enforced slavery, conscripted young men to fight and die in wars, and herded native Americans onto reservations and treated them cruelly. Today it conducts armed raids in search of narcotics; prevents people from voluntarily using drugs that their physicians might otherwise prescribe as cures; seizes property in asset-forfeiture actions; and puts every American at greater risk of terrorist attack by intervening in the politics of other nations. Government in the United States today is even trying to superintend our thoughts by enacting hate-crime statutes.

No institution with the state’s track record deserves a presumption of legitimacy. ...