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Title: Fundamentals of Voluntaryism Author: Carl Watner Language: en Topics: Voluntaryism Source: Retrieved May 20, 2013 from http://www.voluntaryist.com/fundamentals/introduction.html
Voluntaryism is the doctrine that relations among people should be by
mutual consent, or not at all. It represents a means, an end, and an
insight. Voluntaryism does not argue for the specific form that
voluntary arrangements will take; only that force be abandoned so that
individuals in society may flourish. As it is the means which determine
the end, the goal of an all voluntary society must be sought
voluntarily. People cannot be coerced into freedom. Hence, the use of
the free market,
, persuasion, and non-violent resistance as the primary ways to change
people’s ideas about the State. The voluntaryist insight, that all
tyranny and government are grounded upon popular acceptance, explains
why voluntary means are sufficient to attain that end.
Violence is never a means to knowledge. As Isabel Paterson, explained in
her book, The God of the Machine, “No edict of law can impart to an
individual a faculty denied him by nature. A government order cannot
mend a broken leg, but it can command the mutilation of a sound body. It
cannot bestow intelligence, but it can forbid the use of intelligence.”
Or, as Baldy Harper used to put it, “You cannot shoot a truth!” The
advocate of any form of invasive violence is in a logically precarious
situation. Coercion does not convince, nor is it any kind of argument.
William Godwin pointed out that force “is contrary to the nature of the
intellect, which cannot but be improved by conviction and persuasion,”
and “if he who employs coercion against me could mold me to his purposes
by argument, no doubt, he would.. He pretends to punish me because his
argument is strong; but he really punishes me because he is weak.”
Violence contains none of the energies that enhance a civilized human
society. At best, it is only capable of expanding the material existence
of a few individuals, while narrowing the opportunities of most others.
People engage in voluntary exchanges because they anticipate improving
their lot; the only individuals capable of judging the merits of an
exchange are the parties to it. Voluntaryism follows naturally if no one
does anything to stop it. The interplay of natural property and
exchanges results in a free market price system, which conveys the
necessary information needed to make intelligent economic decisions.
Interventionism and collectivism make economic calculation impossible
because they disrupt the free market price system. Even the smallest
government intervention leads to problems which justify the call for
more and more intervention. Also, “controlled” economies leave no room
for new inventions, new ways of doing things, or for the “unforeseeable
and unpredictable.” Free market competition is a learning process which
brings about results which no one can know in advance. There is no way
to tell how much harm has been done and will continue to be done by
political restrictions.
The voluntary principle assures us that while we may have the
possibility of choosing the worst, we also have the possibility of
choosing the best. It provides us the opportunity to make things better,
though it doesn’t guarantee results. While it dictates that we do not
force our idea of “better” on someone else, it protects us from having
someone else’s idea of “better” imposed on us by force. The use of
coercion to compel virtue eliminates its possibility, for to be moral,
an act must be uncoerced. If a person is compelled to act in a certain
way (or threatened with government sanctions), there is nothing virtuous
about his or her behavior. Freedom of choice is a necessary ingredient
for the achievement of virtue. Whenever there is a chance for the good
life, the risk of a bad one must also be accepted.
Common sense and reason tell us that nothing can be right by legislative
enactment if it is not already right by nature. Epictetus, the Stoic,
urged men to defy tyrants in such a way as to cast doubt on the
necessity of government itself. “If the government directed them to do
something that their reason opposed, they were to defy the government.
If it told them to do what their reason would have told them to do
anyway, they did not need a government.” Just as we do not require a
State to dictate what is right or wrong in growing food, manufacturing
textiles, or in steel-making, we do not need a government to dictate
standards and procedures in any field of endeavor. “In spite of the
legislature, the snow will fall when the sun is in Capricorn, and the
flowers will bloom when it is in Cancer.”
Although certain services and goods are necessary to our survival, it is
not essential that they be provided by the government. Voluntaryists
oppose the State because it uses coercive means. The means are the seeds
which bud into flower and come into fruition. It is impossible to plant
the seed of coercion and then reap the flower of voluntaryism. The
coercionist always proposes to compel people to do some-thing, usually
by passing laws or electing politicians to office. These laws and
officials depend upon physical violence to enforce their wills.
Voluntary means, such as non-violent resistance, for example, violate no
one’s rights. They only serve to nullify laws and politicians by
ignoring them. Voluntaryism does not require of people that they
violently overthrow their government, or use the electoral process to
change it; merely that they shall cease to support their government,
whereupon it will fall of its own dead weight. If one takes care of the
means, the end will take care of itself.
It is a commonplace observation that the means one uses must be
consistent with the goal one seeks. It is impossible to “wage a war for
peace” or “fight politics by becoming political.” Freedom and private
property are total, indivisible concepts that are compromised wherever
and whenever the State exists. Since all things are related to one
another in our complicated social world, if one man’s freedom or private
property may be violated (regardless of the justification), then every
man’s freedom and property are insecure. The superior man can only be
sure of his freedom if the inferior man is secure in his rights. We
often forget that we can secure our liberty only by preserving it for
the most despicable and obnoxious among us, lest we set precedents that
can reach us.
It is a fact of human nature that the only person who can think with
your brain is you. Neither can a person be compelled to do anything
against his or her will, for each person is ultimately responsible for
his or her own actions. Governments try to terrorize individuals into
submitting to tyranny by grabbing their bodies as hostages and trying to
destroy their spirits. This strategy is not successful against the
person who harbors the Stoic attitude toward life, and who refuses to
allow pain to disturb the equanimity of his or her mind, and the
exercise of reason. A government might destroy one’s body or property,
but it cannot injure one’s philosophy of life. — Furthermore, the
voluntaryist rejects the use of political power because it can only be
exercised by implicitly endorsing or using violence to accomplish one’s
ends. The power to do good to others is also the power to do them harm.
Power to compel people, to control other people’s lives, is what
political power is all about. It violates all the basic principles of
voluntaryism: might does not make right; the end never justifies the
means; nor may one person coercively interfere in the life of another.
Even the smallest amount of political power is dangerous. First, it
reduces the capacity of at least some people to lead their own lives in
their own way. Second, and more important from the voluntaryist point of
view, is what it does to the person wielding the power: it corrupts that
person’s character.