Sobran the Reluctant Anarchist

The slide from conservativism to anarchism

Most folks have heard me describe the “libertarian streak” that I claim to hold. In many ways I do, but there are certain aspects that I strongly disagree with. As a Catholic, I’m very much pro-life. I believe in a living wage set by the state, a state that sets the boundaries for fair play among businesses, and a state that feels morally obliged to fight the war on drugs. Suprisingly, it is my staunch stance on the war against drugs that divides me from most libertarians (abortion and living wage standards aside).

But there is another aspect that separates me from the libertarians at large. It is the topic of anarchy and the role of the state.

Aquinas argued even without the fall of man, a state would still be necessary by virtue of being social creatures. “Anarcho-capitalists” such as Rothbard and Hoppe strongly disagree, arguing as Joseph Sobran does here that the state will always overstep its bounds:

Murray died a few years ago without quite having made an anarchist of me. It was left to his brilliant disciple, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, to finish my conversion. Hans argued that no constitution could restrain the state. Once its monopoly of force was granted legitimacy, constitutional limits became mere fictions it could disregard; nobody could have the legal standing to enforce those limits. The state itself would decide, by force, what the constitution meant, steadily ruling in its own favor and increasing its own power. This was true a priori, and American history bore it out.

I disagree.

Sobran and Rothbard argue this point eloquently, and I can say that I disagree with them on a macro scale. Certainly the length of human history bears this out time and time again.

The problem is that proverbial leap from the rule of law to tyrrany is presented as if it happens instantaneously, as if the difference between 1776 and 2004 was the difference between Monday and Tuesday.

It is the question of the maintenance of the state that anarchists by nature cannot answer adequately. That maintenance requires the element and proper consideration of time on constitutional governments and social contract theory.

Here perhaps is my largest complaint with regards to the Rothbard argument for open-ended capitalism; time. Can Rothbard, Hesse, and Sobran seriously argue that the American experiment was one of tyrrany? Of oppression? Did it happen overnight? That even today, we have descended into something opposite of that which our Founding Fathers represented?

True, I could concede that socialism is not a dead political or economic philosophy, and indeed it is held by many conservatives today. Russell Kirk was every bit a social engineer, and the conservativism he presents as a political philosophy is the opposite of what thinkers such as Aquinas, von Mises, or Chesterton would envision as ideal.

Is anarchy through capitalism the antidote? If Sobran’s Aristotelian background should speak towards anything, one can only think towards the Nicomachean Ethics and be reminded of the postulated virtuous mean between excessive socialism and excessive individualism.

This excessive answer to creeping socialism is probably intended as a method of balancing the scales (one could only hope). Aquinas had it right.

There is a balance, and it is closer to libertarianism and a minimized – and not merely minimalist – state. A viable state strong enough to protect the public square and the proper ordering of society towards that end is what humanity desires. Is it that hard to acheive? To maintain?