One Law for All

One of the obfuscating features of sociological commentary – whether it takes place in academic tomes or in popular magazines – is the tendency to describe the subject matter in terms of vast, overreaching abstractions. For instance, “the market” does X, “the government” does Y, “companies” do Z, and so on. Such categorisations are not, of course, unimportant; the use of shorthand is often needed as a clear identification of particular groups of individuals, each of whom share a common feature relevant to the discussion. However, the fact that every group is, indeed, nothing more than a group of individuals is precisely what is forgotten if the use of these abstractions is taken too far.

Such use becomes particularly meaningless when one starts to ascribe to these groups particular characteristics independent of those of the individual participants – as if the group itself is some kind of sentient, thinking entity. So, for instance, we are always told that “the markets” are “wild”, “capricious,” “erratic”, “reckless”, “selfish” and imbibed with “irrational exuberance”; “the government”, on the other hand, is always “wise”, “prudent”, “far sighted”, “selfless” and “serving”. Each of these groups, however, is populated by human beings, all of whom are living, breathing, thinking, desiring, choosing and acting. Only by examining the precise motivations and incentives acting upon these individuals can we ever hope to gain an understanding of the true nature of the groups they join.

One of the most serious misunderstandings to which thinking in terms of bland abstractions can lead is the idea that “government” is somehow endowed with a different set of moral rules from every other group. We all know that theft is wrong, whatever the circumstance. Regardless of your status or qualities – rich or poor, fat or thin, smart or stupid – every person can gain the property of another only by offering him something that he values in voluntary exchange (unless that person wishes to make you a gift). In short, you must offer a valuable service. Taking property that belongs to another person is almost universally condemned as immoral.

Members of “the government” however do not have to follow this rule, or at least not when acting in their "official" capacity. These people do not have to offer anyone a valuable service in return for their revenue; they can simply take what they need to fund their ventures through taxation. Similarly, no private citizen is morally permitted to kill another human being, whether this is for either personal or political gain. In the first instance he would be labelled a “murderer”, in the latter a “terrorist” (which itself can be an obfuscating abstraction). Yet those who populate the government – when they launch their foreign wars of imperialism, when they kill thousands of innocent civilians in bombings, when they blockade “rogue” states and starve its children to death – are permitted to do this with seemingly little question. True enough, the question whether such acts are an appropriate means for the state to achieve specific ends may be hotly debated; but the right, in principle, of the state to carry out these acts if it so decides is something that receives far less attention.

Further obfuscation of the basic, criminal nature of the state is achieved through the use of euphemisms for everything that it does. So whereas private citizens may “steal” and “rob” in order to gain “loot”, the government “taxes” in order to gain “revenue”. Whereas private citizens are, as we have said, “murderers” or “terrorists”, the government is a “peacekeeper” or “spreader of democracy”. Yet there is essentially no difference between the clearly immoral acts committed by private citizens and the supposedly “moral” acts committed by members of the government. Indeed, if you are an innocent civilian, does it really make much difference to you whether you are killed in an armed robbery or whether you end up as “collateral damage” (another euphemism) in a drone strike?

Each group – the private citizenry and the government – is populated not by devils and angels respectively, but by humans endowed with the same qualities of rationality, intelligence, and emotional disposition, together with every other blessing and failing of our species. All actions are initiated by one of these individuals or by individuals who choose to act in concert. An action that is immoral for a private citizen to carry out should, therefore, be considered as equally immoral for a government citizen to carry out. Theft is the deliberate appropriation of property belonging to another without that person’s consent. How are taxes to be distinguished from this? Taxes are deliberately taken; the property belongs to another; and it is certainly taken without that person’s consent. For if taxes are truly voluntary then refusal to pay them would not land one in jail. Launching any kind of offensive, foreign war (which itself will be paid for with tax loot) that kills innocent civilians is indistinguishable from murder. Why does the fact that those who commit these atrocities in the state’s name, while wearing government-issued costumes, or waving and saluting flags with pomp and circumstance, let them off the hook?

This phenomenon of divided codes of morality is hardly to unique to our time. With the aid of an anecdote from antiquity, St Augustine indicates that the fundamental basis for any such division has always been “might makes right”:

The idea that any immoral acts of the state are legitimated by the institution of democracy is false. For what is true for the one is, in general, true for the many. If no one person can, alone, steal or murder then it follows that no group of people may, together, steal or murder. Further, if I have no right to steal or murder then neither can my so-called “representative” derive this right from my endorsement of his candidacy in an election.

If all of this – the division of morality in society, this separation into two distinct moral castes – wasn't bad enough, it is made far worse by its sickening decoration and honour with the rhetoric of “public service”. Theft and murder makes little difference to the victim whether it’s done by a saint or sinner, by a Samaritan or sadist. The whole cloud of altruistic verbiage is designed, again, to obscure the fact that the state is populated by exactly the same type of human being as the rest of society; they will each attempt to further their own ends with the means available to them. Thus, if immoral means are legitimated then they will most certainly take advantage of them. In fact, even if we were to assume that they genuinely seek “good” ends, and are thoroughly convinced of the “morality” of their position, it has often been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Communism – the political system that butchered tens of millions – was created and fostered by those who believed that what they were doing was right. But this is before you get into the very convincing argument that the state – the sphere where it is permissible to behave immorally – attracts the very people who relish to immoral behaviour for its own sake.

Libertarians believe in a basic morality that is uniform to all people – that everyone, king or subject, employer or employee, rich or poor, are subject to the same cardinal moral rule, namely that you can do whatever you want with your own person and property so long as it does not inflict violence on the person or property of anyone else. The actions of all human beings need to be examined in regard to this basic truth; no excuses are derived from being a member of a certain caste. The fact that individual humans, their motivations, choices and ends are central to everything that happens in this world, cannot be hidden by abstractions, sociological inventions, metaphysical nonsense, traditions, ranks, ceremonies, patriotic songs, flags and so on. Libertarians need to do the best they can to unmask the truth behind these illusions.

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Notes

[1] St Augustine (tr. Rev. Marcus Dods), The City of God, in Phillip Schaff (ed.), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series, Vol. II, WM B Eerdmans Publishing Company (1886), Book IV, Chapter 4, 165.