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Title: Anarchist Law
Author: Cole B. Thomerson
Date: 9/12/2021
Language: en
Topics: law, Human nature, anti-state, anarchism, anarchist, anarcho-communism

Cole B. Thomerson

Anarchist Law

Laws are generally considered the best way to control anti-social

behavior* (Anti-Social Behavior can be synonymous with what most people

would call crime. But if murder were legal, it would no longer be a

crime, but still very frowned upon by the rest of society. There are

also laws, such as punishing a homeless person for stealing a potato

from your local grocery store to feed his family of six. While that is a

crime, I wouldn’t consider it anti-social behavior.), they are made by

good people and enforced by good people. This is very, very wrong. The

fact you have to enforce a moral code bestowed upon the masses with

violence, is nonsensical. Furthermore, And when the enforcer isn’t a

good person, (even though it’s impossible to have a good enforcer of the

state.) probably because it’s power with no consequences, you can’t do

anything because they have the power and the state is on their side.

“But, oh Cole!” You shout, “My husband is a police officer and he’s a

dashing fellow!” Yeah but he also has an inherently corrupt position in

society. This can be as little as a speeding ticket you were given when

you know for a fact you weren’t speeding, but the enforcers need to hit

that monthly quota, so who’s the state gonna believe? Or it can be as

big as a police officer murdering an unarmed black man because he was

black. Both of the aforementioned are consequences of the existence of

the state, who create laws for their own benefit; the enforcers of the

state, who are making sure you’re following the state’s orders.

But what exactly is a law? A law is a rule you have to follow and if you

fail to do so you will be punished accordingly. Most people would say

laws are usually made because of some moral standpoint. So it’s a moral

standpoint with the added caveat of if you fail to comply you will also

be punished. Now am I saying to just remove all laws in the current

state of society? No, that would be dumb, and is also what a lot of

“anarcho”-capitalists suggest: just remove the state and the free-market

will guide the world! This notion is wrong, and is not what I will be

arguing for. You need to restructure society as a whole, whether it be

the flaws in the single family home, the very existence of money, which

creates classes, the fact war and capitalism both feed each other, the

problems with representative democracy, and this list goes on and on;

those are also completely different essays. I believe laws are obsolete

and have no need in the ideal society because they are not made from a

moral standpoint, they do not deter anti-social behavior, they cause

more harm than good, and any system that has punishment as its main

incentive should be abolished.

Part 1: Punishment isn’t a good incentive.

You see punishment as the only way to deal with anti-social behavior

because it’s effective, it’s quick, and it will cause internal, life

changing change within any truent’s bad character. There are three

reasons you would punish someone, which of course all have special

philosophical school names: Retribution, Deterrence, and Rehabilitation.

Retribution is saying, it’s morally okay to hurt someone because they

hurt someone, or deserve it. An eye for an eye. Deterrence justifies

hurting someone by saying it will be better in the long run, when no

little anti-social behavior happens. Rehabilitation says it’s morally

okay to hurt someone because it’s for their own good, they will learn a

lesson from it.

The problem with everything I mentioned above is that people commit

anti-social behavior because they believe it is in the best of their

interests. Retributionism is just dumb and I don’t want to spend too

much time on it. It doesn’t matter if one deserves anything or not, it

is not effective and is explicitly not helpful, so I don’t give a shit

about this argument. Deterrence is more nuanced than that; while it does

sound agreeable, it is flawed because it assumes the incentive will

change one’s actions, or even their thoughts. Let’s say you make

shoplifting have the death penalty, but that homeless man needs a

potato, so do you think he will choose death by starvation, or possible

death by lethal injection. He will go with what is in his best interest.

So you can’t tackle after the fact problems, you need to get deeper than

that; you have to deal with what causes people to shoplift, instead of,

“Oh what are we gonna do if someone shoplifts?” Deal with the why,

instead of the what.

Now Rehabilitation is the most lame-ass excuse for the justification of

hurting someone. With Retributivism, it’s blatantly sadistic, and

doesn’t really hide it. With Deterrence, the person who believes in it,

actually believes it works. While someone who justifies hurting someone

with, “it’s for their own good.” is just another way of saying, “I don’t

know how to deal with the actual problem so here’s a little punishment.”

OR, “I hate this group of people and in order for the system to continue

as it has been violence needs to be inflicted upon them, so I shall use

rehabilitation as a justification for my cruelty”. This kind of

justification is very common in parenting, and it’s those who I am the

most sympathetic towards. Let’s say your child is playing on the

sidewalk of a very busy street and they run out so you call them back

and hit them. That’s it. The problem here is that you’re not giving an

alternative on what they should be doing, and if you are giving them an

alternative, a punishment isn’t necessary. You’re also creating the norm

for your child that in order to be a good parent one must hit their kid,

thus creating a cycle of abuse and oppression, which will also create

resentment (The nuclear family is flawed! And can’t maintain itself!).

“But I caught my child watching pornography on the computer!!!!!!! Do

they not deserve their computer privileges taken away?” You protest, I

will ask you why they did that and go from there. Deal with the why, and

not the what.

And a punishment won’t fix their inner behavior. There was an experiment

involving the punishment of lab rats where you condition them with a

routine where they press a lever and they get rewarded. Then you take

away the reward. The rat will press the lever 100 times. 100 times is

now the number to quantify interest. Now, instead of rewarding, or doing

nothing when the rat presses the lever, you will punish it with a shock.

For a while the rat avoids the lever in fear of the shock. After a

while, the association between the shock and the lever wears off and the

rat tries again. Just as you would avoid the police when doing something

illegal. How many times does the rat press the lever? 100, again. And

what is also notable about this time, is the rat starts off slowly, with

caution, and gets faster as it realizes nothing will happen. This goes

to show that punishment doesn’t change anything internally; the rat

still wants the reward but doesn’t want to get hurt, so it will act on

its want when it thinks nothing is watching. When you’re doing something

illegal, you will avoid the police. Going back to the previous example,

your child will still look at pornography, just is much, much more

secretive about it.

Punishment is not a good incentive because it does not get to the core

of the problem regardless of if you justify the punishment with, “Oh but

he deserves it”, “Oh but he won’t do it again”, or “It’s good for him”.

People commit anti-social behavior because they believe it is in their

best interest to, so change what they believe is in their best self

interest, than punishing them for having said self interest. Deal with

the why, instead of the what.

Part 2: laws are not made for the benefit of all.

We are also led to believe laws are there for a reason, and if they

weren't humanity would suffer. I just have one question: would you say

the laws Trump tried to, or successfully passed are made on moral

judgments? The border wall? The Muslim ban? The War on Drugs? The War on

Terror? Everything revolving around social justice? These are not made

to stop anti-social behavior, but made to uphold and keep white

supremacy.

“But murder! Is that not a law found on morality?” You exclaim with all

passion. Yeah, murder is generally considered to be morally wrong, a law

is not going to change that. A law punishes that, and we know why that

doesn’t work, don’t we? And that is why murder is such a good example of

how to explain to statists that you can actually help people and not be

sadistic reactionaries.

Someone murders someone, a tragedy, I admit. Punishing them, including

the death penalty and prisons, are not going help. You ask why they

murdered the other and go from there. You hire actual psychologists to

help the anti-socialites and try to make them better people for the end

goal of them being able to reenter society. If it is IMPOSSIBLE to help

someone, which is extraordinarily rare, then can you blame them for

being a horrible person? No. If this occurs, you will HUMANELY

quarantine them from the rest of society. It goes back to the question:

is evil born or created? Both of which don’t require punishment; in

fact, both of which require help, actual help. The former, you can’t be

mad at, because they can’t help it, and the latter you can’t be mad at,

because you can help it. Deal with the why, instead of the what.

You can be arrested for “stealing” food others have thrown away.

You can be arrested for sleeping on a public park bench.

You can also be arrested for protesting the injustices mentioned above.

And you better bet your ass these are enforced. But not if you have

power. If you murder a woman, but have the money to hire an fancy dancy

expensive lawyer, then you don’t get punished. If you admit to sexually

assaulting a women, while being recorded, you can become president of

the United States.

Part 3: laws cause more harm than good.

There is no way you could say putting more police in neighborhoods with

a higher black population because they have a higher drug crime rate is

a good idea. And you will realize that’s a bad idea once you think about

it for more than six seconds. This specific example happens all the

fucking time and is a self-justifying cirlce of oppression and violence.

Yeah, no shit the statistics say that, it’s because you have already put

more police in that area, but because there’s black people, the only

thing that’s changed is now since there are more police which will

increase the number of crimes people have been arrested for, the graphs

will be very skewed and will increase policing in those neighborhoods,

which will make the crime numbers up which will make the graphs skewed

which will make more police, etc., etc..

“Oh, but that’s just a policing problem! If we just have citizen

oversight-” I cut you off there, because you’re being annoying. In New

York City when people tried establishing citizen oversight committees,

the police striked. “Okay okay, hear me out, body cams… eh?” Yeah that’s

a great idea! Except for the fact you can just… turn them off… Dang,

good idea while it lasted. “But going back to my main point, it’s a

policing problem, if we fix everything-” Again, stop being annoying. You

can’t fix the role laws and police have in society. They are made by and

for white people to uphold white supremacy. “Oh yeah? If there’s no laws

or police, how are you going to make sure anti-social behavior is dealt

with?” You ask cunningly with a hint of mock.

Voluntary Community Self Defence, or a Community Protection Agency, or

any kind of decentralized, voluntary, temporary position citizens have

in protecting the community, who can also be recalled at any time. The

goal of this is to not have a group of people who have all the power,

and a group who gets powered on, to make the protectors and the masses

equal. The goal is to increase accountability. And most importantly, to

deal with the why, and not the how.