|
 In
his article In
Search of the Antimarx, Bob "Missing Loop" Murphy airs our
disagreement over the merits of attempting to convert masses of people to
anarcho-capitalism. Murphy characterizes my view fairly in his short
summary of it; in another article I explain why I think rational
evangelism won't work. By this I mean simply that people are never
going to be persuaded by rational argument to adopt anarcho-capitalism in
numbers sufficient to dissolve government. Talk isn't going to carry the
day for us, and neither can force when we are so outnumbered.
But what I want to address here is Murphy's intent to go beyond rational
argument, to advance an anarcho-capitalist agenda by packaging the
message.
First of all I think Murphy's goal is unrealistic, indeed unattainable:
"I think the only hope for a stateless society is a
population committed to true voluntarism, that is, to absolute and total
freedom."
Frankly I would despair if I thought this were true. And
anyway, if such a population were so committed to freedom there wouldn't
be much reason to worry about limited government because it would work.
A common argument made against anarcho-capitalism is that it requires
perfect people, or at least people far more virtuous than the general
population is now. Murphy seems to accept this argument. The argument is
wrong because, as David Friedman points out, imperfect people behave far
more benignly in markets than they do when wielding government:
"I have encountered precisely the same error among
libertarians who prefer limited government to anarcho-capitalism.
Limited government, they say, can guarantee uniform justice based on
objective principles. Under anarcho-capitalism, the law varies from
place to place and person to person, according to the irrational desires
and beliefs of the different customers that different protection and
arbitration agencies must serve.
This argument assumes that the limited government is set up by a
population most or all of whose members believe in the same just
principles of law. Given such a population, anarcho-capitalism will
produce that same uniform, just law; there will be no market for any
other. But just as capitalism can accommodate to a diversity of
individual ends, so anarcho-capitalism can accommodate to a diversity of
individual judgments about justice.
An ideal objectivist society with a limited government is superior to an
anarcho-capitalist society in precisely the same sense that an ideal
socialist society is superior to a capitalist society. Socialism does
better with perfect people than capitalism does with imperfect people;
limited government does better with perfect people than
anarcho-capitalism with imperfect. And it is better to wear a bikini
with the sun shining than a raincoat when it is raining. That is no
argument against carrying an umbrella."
- from Socialism,
Limited Government, Anarchy, and Bikinis
in The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman
The question of course is how to get from here to there.
Murphy wants to do it by marketing a message. He admires Marx as a
marketer of ideas:
"And you have to hand it to Marx. He sure as hell
didn’t lead by example. (He himself was bourgeois and a scoundrel to
boot.)
So how did he do it? His writing gave people an entire worldview.
Marxism allows you to interpret history, economics, politics virtually
everything. And it was all based on a basic human yearning:
equality."
But is equality a basic human yearning? I don't yearn for
it. I'd say the basic human vice Marx played upon was jealousy. And Murphy
says it's "far easier to dislodge an erroneous belief than a correct
one", but then how does one explain the success of Marx? America once
had far more limited government and far freer markets but Marx's false
philosophy made great inroads against a more correct philosophy and
continues to do so. It's clear that false premises don't prevent a
philosophy from making great advances. Marxism advanced not by rational
argument, not by being correct, but by irrational appeals and systematic
incentives.
Murphy is ready to go beyond rational argument and seems to be willing to
persuade people on the basis of false premises:
"Or, if you don’t believe in evolution, then
(chances are) you’re a believer in one of the major religions. And
then of course the popularity of your creed is an example that people
can be inspired by the truth as well as by myths."
What?
To convince religious people that truth can carry the day Murphy invites
them to take their own creed as an example. But these creeds are
contradictory which means at least some of them are wrong. In fact for any
of them to be true most of them must be largely wrong. And since most of
these people must be embracing creeds which are largely wrong their own
creed is not a valid example of how people can be inspired by truth, quite
the opposite. Yet Murphy invites them to accept it as a valid example.
I'm certainly not saying that such an argument cannot persuade many
people, Marx demonstrated that false arguments can be very persuasive
while appealing to the irrational. I just think such persuasion is
worthless for the purpose of getting people to embrace truth, because
while it is possible to arrive at a correct conclusion by an invalid
argument it is not possible to apprehend truth by such means. I don't
trust someone who has reached a correct conclusion by invalid reasoning
because if they're vulnerable to one invalid argument they're vulnerable
to the next.
Being correct is only an advantage in argument if the audience you're
trying to persuade is competent to grasp a valid argument. The success of
Marx's collectivist philosophy argues very strongly against the idea that
Murphy's chosen audience is sufficiently competent.
To put it bluntly, collectivism can be advanced by "useful
idiots" but incompetence can't usefully advance rational
individualism.
December
17, 2001
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