Anarchism After Pinker

Jonathan Giardina

Introduction
According to Howard Zinn, Dalton Trumbo, the author of the antiwar novel "Johnny Got His Gun," did not want that particular book to be reprinted during World War 2. He "did not want that overpowering antiwar message to reach the American public ... when a war had to be fought against fascism." (Zinn [1990] 2003, 80) This bit of data always struck me as odd. If a work was good in the past how can it now be unprintable just because the situation changed? Facts are one thing but suppressing an argument seems pointless. If an argument is invalid or no longer applies then the remedy is another argument, one that will refute the "bad" one. If there is a refutation that is so transparently obvious, it is more likely to be elicited if the faulty work is relatively available for public consumption. Making an intellectual product scarce intentionally without a stated rationale may postpone the day when an articulate rebuttal is communicated. As interesting as this line of reasoning may be, it is, in the last analysis, just that - reasoning, rationalism. Trumbo and the American people in the 1940's were faced with a situation that didn't lend itself to "cool observation". When confronted with the trials and tribulations that go along with being human, rare is the person, I suspect, who can repress his emotions and values and assess his problems like a stringently rational Dr. Manhattan (godlike character from the graphic novel "Watchmen"). Although Trumbo's decision may not have been correct from a long-term perspective it was far from unethical and immoral. I found myself to be in sympathy with him for a couple of reasons. First, his intentions were good. Second, he was living through trying times. As of 2012, I have another reason to forgive Trumbo. After reading Steven Pinker's 2011 instant classic "The Better Angels of Our Nature" I feel, if you'll pardon me, as though I've walked a mile in Trumbo's shoes. Of course, I am not the author or the publisher of "The Better Angels of Our Nature" and I never had to decide whether it would be published and will likely never have the authority to stop it from being reprinted. However, I, while I admit the brilliance of Pinker's book, am afraid that its dissemination will make matters worse in the short run just as Dalton Trumbo apparently believed that publishing "Johnny Got His Gun" would make matters worse in (at least) the short run. Being a libertarian, I read Pinker's book with a sense of unease. People being what they are, I know that several (many?) passages will play right into the hands of the authoritarians. That's why I'm writing this book. As for the title of my book, I was tempted to add a question mark after the phrase. Omitting the question mark may leave readers with the impression that we can assume that a long-standing ideology will survive new revelations before we even begin our inquiry. Restoring the question mark prompts the reader to ask himself "Will anarchism exist after Pinker?" In spite of these misgivings, I left the title alone. We now know that anarchism indeed does exist post-2011 and I (perhaps unwisely) predict that it will exist for some time to come. It will continue for some of the same reasons that socialism exists after Hayek as the title of Theodore Burczak's magnum opus makes clear. (I

choose the title of my book in part to pay homage to Professor Burczak's work.) An ideology can continue indefinitely if only because an ideology is not something set in stone. It can evolve. It can be redefined. Arguably, this means that it, in fact, didn't survive the assault but if this is true then every revision of a doctrine would have to be followed by a name-change. Although I would never compare myself to Henry Hazlitt, I would like to note that this book is inspired by his commentary on John Maynard Keynes, "The Failure of the New Economics". Like Hazlitt, I will have to use quotes from a book that is not public domain. Hazlitt, in the acknowledgments section of his book, wrote that he was indebted to the publisher of "The General Theory of Employment, interest, and Money" (Keynes' most acclaimed book) "for their generous permission to reprint so many passages from that book." (Hazlitt [1959] 2007, v) Whether you are a libertarian or not, it would be illuminating to ask "What if the publisher had not given Hazlitt permission?" No one knows what would have happened but we can speculate. One possibility is that he would've had to find some way around the law. He could've paraphrased but, according to Hazlitt, this would have led to an inferior work. He argued, "Extensive quotation rather than mere paraphrase seemed to me almost unavoidable in the present critical work because of the many existing and possible interpretations and disputes concerning what Keynes actually said." If formally constrained by the authorities Hazlitt would have been forbidden from reproducing passages from copyrighted material. His much heralded work would be unrecognizable. Let's consider another scenario. Suppose enforcement of intellectual property laws caused Hazlitt to give up the project. Today the book wouldn't exist. The utility that Hazlitt's book supplies people with would never be experienced. Is this an argument for repeal of intellectual property laws? Perhaps not. As Thomas Hobbes wrote, "The estate of man can never be without some incommodity or other." (Hobbes [1651] 1985, 238) If intellectual property regulations were repealed this would inconvenience people as well. Restating his position, Hobbes argued, "The condition of man in this life shall never be without Inconveniences." (p. 260) As Niccolo Machiavelli explained, "he who looks carefully into the matter will find, that in all human affairs, we cannot rid ourselves of one inconvenience without running into another ... For which reason in all our deliberations we ought to consider where we are likely to encounter least inconvenience, and accept that as the course to be preferred; since we shall never find any line of action entirely free from disadvantage." (Machiavelli [1883] 2007, 23) When Ayn Rand wrote "All public projects are mausoleums, not always in shape, but always in cost" she was trying to emphasize that goals brought about by force or "the political means" will have serious consequences. (Rand 1964, 95 - 98) "Choice has consequences." When considering human action we must always look at matters in context and ponder "the utility losses that are always consequent to choice having been made, whether these be suffered by the chooser or by third parties." (Buchanan, [1969] 1978, 44 & 45) Like all laws and governments, intellectual property laws represent organized violence.

According to the anarchist Jean Grave, the whited sepulchers of old outwardly appeared beautiful unto men but within they were full of dead men's bones and all uncleanliness. Ayn Rand, through her work, has emphasized the ugliness hidden by innocuoussounding phrases. She has also condemned what she calls "dropping the context" or advocating an end without "regard to context, costs or means." (Rand 1964, 95) Her friend, the previously mentioned Henry Hazlitt, claimed that nine-tenths of economic fallacies are the result of evaluating human action outside the context of human lives as a whole. He popularized the idea that "the art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups." (Hazlitt [1946] 1996, 5) When it is argued that government or a particular policy is desirable we must strive not to drop the context.

Chapter 1: A Taxonomy of Violence

Q: When is a decline in violence not actually a decline? A: When it's actually an increase. Of course Pinker understands this. The "violence" in the subtitle means "violence per capita". (Apparently sticking those two extra words on the cover would've made the book appear too academic and halved the book's sales.) This, admittedly, is a minor quibble but it should be emphasized that if we go back in time far enough we will find a period where homicides were fewer in absolute number if only because the human population was relatively microscopic. Speaking of homo sapiens, the anthropologist Spencer Wells said that "we nearly went extinct about 70,000 years ago. We dropped down to 2,000 people." Before then the world population was "maybe between 10,000 and 100,000, but certainly not in the millions or billions." (Seed No. 14 January/February 2008, 48) If we assume the worst - that everyone who died during this near extinction died from homicide (an extremely unlikely scenario) - we get a body count (absolute number) of 98,000. According to Matt Ridley, in the near future, the world population will be 9 billion. If the homicide rate is only 1% that amounts to 90 million slayings per year. The gospel according to Pinker is that a higher proportion of humans live and die without getting killed by another human. Presumably, the vastly greater absolute numbers of people who live and die without being killed are supposed to compensate for the "slightly" greater absolute numbers of people who live and die and do get killed. With this digression out of the way we now turn to our main topic. Unlike something that is intrinsically evil, violence must be looked at in context before it can be categorized (and perhaps not even then). Consider the following example: Smith strikes Brown. Is this initiation of force? The answer matters because aggression against non-aggressors is at best morally dubious. According to a character in a famous novel Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate - do your hear me? no man may start - the use of physical force against others. (Rand [1957] 1992, 936) I can testify from personal experience that children in the latter years of the twentieth century used the words "He started it" innumerable times. The one who spoke those words was not implying that he never used unjustified violence in his entire life. He may be quite aware that he has undoubtedly aggressed against another at some point in the past but according to him he has received his punishment or he didn't but there is a formal or informal statute of limitations or the recent assault is not a punishment or it is a punishment but it is out of proportion to his offense. As should be apparent, this short phrase expresses a lot. What about the jargon from the novel? "Initiate the use of physical force" could mean the same thing as "He started it" or it could mean literally initiating force - using violence against someone whose "liabilities" never had a positive

sum, someone who never used his corporeal body to unjustifiably attack someone. When people indulge in predation against strangers they are knowingly threatening or hurting "persons who may have done nothing wrong." (Randy Barnett in Rothbard [1982] 2002, 180) "There are many taxonomies of violence." (Pinker 2011, 508) Libertarians, for over a century now, have provided us with the tools to compose our own. The first category could be labeled aggression or government. As Benjamin Tucker explained, Aggression is simply another name for government. The essence of government is control or attempting to control. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader ... On the other hand, he who resists another's attempt to control is not an aggressor, an invader, a governor, but simply a defender, a protector. (Tucker [1897] 2011, 23) As hinted at earlier, whether an act of violence is offense or defense depends on context. The exact definitions of these terms may be of interest but are not relevant for the discussion at hand. What is extremely pertinent is that, according to most libertarians, violence is not evil per se. There are two basic categories of violence. One is always illegitimate and the other is legitimate or at least acceptable. Before we just assume that a decrease in the rate and the brutality of violence is synonymous with progress let's take notice of some scenarios where this is, arguably, not the case. Consider a situation where a decline in violence per capita is due entirely or almost entirely to a decline in legitimate violence. Admittedly, this is a highly improbable scenario but if it did materialize it would difficult to make the case that the amount of violence was as low as it could be. In such a situation, it would not be surprising if an increase in defensive violence ultimately brought about a decrease in total violence. Adhering to this same logic, an increase in legitimate violence (both per capita and absolute), even one that pushes total violence upward, is not a necessarily a bad thing. If "mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent" (Adam Smith in Sowell 1987, 149) then isn't it also the case that cruelty to the guilty is mercy to the innocent? If so then not just any violence but cruelty would be not just good but glorious. Of course, the above raises many questions and controversies that will not be covered here. The primary purpose of these notes is to convey the lesson that if violence is not inherently bad then a decline is not inherently good.

Chapter 2: Polecats vs. ions

According to Pinker, "the Leviathan - a government with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force" is "a major reducer of violence." (Pinker 2011, 538) This may be so but reduction of violence is not the ultimate end; it is at most a means to an end. According to Ayn Rand, nothing is a value outside the context of man's life; "man's life" meaning "the single, specific, irreplaceable lives of individual men." (Rand 1964, 97) While reducing violence probably increases human welfare, the activities of the Leviathan that cause this reduction certainly decrease human welfare. It is, I'm afraid, unknowable whether the utility gains exceed the utility losses leaving mankind on net better off. In spite of this, this chapter will explore this important issue. As a thought experiment, let's compare life in "the state of nature" to "the Condition of Subjects" (Hobbes [1651] 1985, 238) or life under Authority. For this task, I know of no better guides than Professor A. John Simmons and John Locke. Locke, according to Simmons, taught that "in the state of nature, no matter how bad things get, we are at least at liberty to arm ourselves and use our wits in self-defense; and we face as foes only single persons or small groups." (Simmons 1993, 53) Under all forms of government, on the other hand, the subjects have an appeal to the law, and judges to decide any controversies and restrain any violence that may happen betwixt the subjects themselves, one against another ... Whether (this legal and enforcement apparatus) be from a true love of mankind and society, and such a charity as we owe all one to another, there is reason to doubt. For this is no more than what every man who loves his own power, profit, or greatness may, and naturally must, do, keep those animals from hurting or destroying one another who labour and drudge only for his pleasure and advantage, not out of any love the master has for them, but love of himself, and the profit they bring him. (John Locke in Wootton, ed. 1993, 307 & 308) There you have it: In the state of nature there is no government to keep you safe from private predators. Under the Leviathan, the government keeps you safe but only because of the profit you bring them. As useful as this model is, it also has the potential to mislead. As Thomas Sowell explained Government is not a monolith ... even in a totalitarian society. In democratic societies, where innumerable interest groups are free to organize and influence different branches and agencies of government, there is even less reason to expect the government will follow one coherent policy, much less a policy that would be followed by an ideal government representing the public interest. In the United States, some government agencies have been trying to restrict smoking while other government agencies have been subsidizing the growing of tobacco. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once

referred to "the warring principalities that are known as the federal government." (Sowell 2007, 386) This complicates matters. Governments don't have motives. Groups don't have motives. Individuals have motives. If you believe "Homo homini lupus est" ("Man is a wolf to man") the implications of all this are genuinely unnerving. By leaving the state of nature we've saved ourselves from the polecats (private predators) but now we are faced with the prospect of an absolute despot (a lion). As unsettling as this may sound, it is still far from obvious that government at its worst is more malignant than the state of nature (anarchy). We can't know because we can't conduct controlled experiments. When dealing with human affairs, the range of possibilities are near infinite. We can always imagine a worst-case scenario and a best-case scenario, knowing that both are unlikely and that, due to what is called the tragedy of the human condition, the likely fate for any given individual will be somewhere in between the extremes. That being said, we should keep in mind that "the belief that a person is solely responsible for his own fate," and that "success depends wholly on him" is "probably the pragmatically most effective incentive to successful action." (Hayek [1960] 2011) We are responsible for our destinies. This is the philosophy of a fictional character. According to the narrator, "when a problem came up ..., his first concern was to discover what error he had made; he did not search for anyone's fault but his own." (Rand [1957] 1992, 123) Our options may be awful but we must choose and we alone are culpable for our bad choices. It is up to each of us whether we will be present-oriented or future-oriented, whether we will have a high time-preference or a low one, whether we will sacrifice a lesser good now for a greater good later or not, whether we will be short-sided or not. We are free to utilize the "in the long run we are all dead" approach and be unconcerned with "the handwriting on the wall". We are free to forecast changes and plan accordingly. The back cover of Pinker's book displays the claim "Today we may be living in the most peaceful time in humanity's history." If this is so then today may be your last chance to reflect. As of now, the citizens of Western democracies for the most part do not have to worry about the polecats or the lions but there is no guarantee that this state of affairs will persist. On the contrary, Hans-Hermann Hoppe gives us compelling reasons to believe that it won't. According to him, every minimal state has the inherent tendency to become a maximal state, for once an agency is permitted to collect any taxes, however small and for whatever purpose, it will naturally tend to employ its current tax revenue for the collection of ever more future taxes for the same and/or other purposes. Similarly, once an agency possesses any judiciary monopoly, it will naturally tend to employ this privileged position for the further expansion of its range of jurisdiction. Constitutions, after all, are state constitutions, and whatever limitations they may contain - what is or is not constitutional - is determined by state courts and judges. (Hoppe in Rothbard [1982] 2002, xxi)

For the sake of argument, let's assume Hoppe is correct. If so, then the prudent person ought not to compare the status quo with the state of nature but unlimited government with the state of nature. "It is far worse to be 'exposed to the arbitrary power of one man, who has the command of 100,00' than to be 'exposed to the arbitrary power of 100,000 single men'." (Simmons 1993, 53) It's doubtful that anyone would choose to live under an absolute ruler. To assume that such a situation was ever voluntary is preposterous: As if when men, quitting the state of nature, entered into society, they agreed that all of them but one should be under the restraint of laws, but that he should still retain all the liberty of the state of nature, increased with power, and made licentious by impunity. This is to think that men are so foolish that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by polecats or foxes, but are content, nay think it safety, to be devoured by lions. (Locke in Wootton, ed. 1993, 308) The Declaration of Independence states that "when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations ... evinces a Design to reduce (mankind) under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security." (Is it any wonder that an army major once said "To be painfully blunt, the Declaration of Independence is a subversive document"? (Zinn [1973] 2002)) This, however, is didactic war propaganda. (Does anyone really believe that this "subversive document" was "the unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America"? Everybody agreed with it?) The author wanted war with the king of Great Britain. Cool deliberation guides us to the conclusion that we have no duty to "throw off" any government, even an absolute monarch. Furthermore, the Lockean argument is somewhat defective: The likelihood of being attacked is probably considerably higher in a state of nature with one hundred thousand bad persons than in an absolute monarchy with one, extremely powerful bad person. This may make it more sensible to opt for a small chance of attack by an overwhelming force than to opt for a large chance of attack by weaker (but still threatening) persons. Whether it is irrational to choose an absolute monarchy seems to turn, contrary to Locke's suggestion, on just how bad your state of nature is (or would be) and just how bad the particular monarchy (and monarch) you could choose is (or would be). Locke may have believed that "a government that is not even rationally preferable to the worst kind of state of nature is not one that can even be a candidate for legitimacy." (Simmons 1993, 53 & 54) Can we think of such a government? Hitler's Germany is likely the most obvious example. There are many other tyrannies that may qualify. For example, the Thieu regime. According to Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman With U.S. "know-how" placed in the hands of the most fanatic and vicious elements of the dying order in South Vietnam, the modes and scope of torture and systematic police

violence in the Thieu state reached new heights. Electrical and water torture, the ripping out of fingernails, enforced drinking of solutions of powdered lime, the driving of nails into prisoners' bones (kneecaps or ankles), beatings ending in death, became standard operating procedure in the Thieu prisons. "They hung me from the ceiling and extinguished lighted cigarettes in my nipples and penis" was an example of testimony from a prisoner. "The evidence that was streaming in from all over the Thieu state indicated that it was probably the torture capital of the world." (Chomsky & Herman 1979, 328 & 329) If, in the long run, our only options are the state of nature and despotism, then we must choose between evils.

Conclusion
Authoritarians will no doubt relish Pinker's account of the Montreal police strike of 1969. As Pinker tells it, "within hours of the gendarmes abandoning their posts, that famously safe city was hit with six bank robberies, twelve arsons, a hundred lootings, and two homicides before the Mounties were called in to restore order." (Pinker 2011, 122) One could conclude from this, as Pinker does, that we have an example of a real-world experiment. Science has evidently spoken. Anarchism is untenable. On the other hand, Hans-Hermann Hoppe argued, Experience cannot beat logic, and interpretations of observational evidence which are not in line with the laws of logical reasoning are no refutation of these but the sign of a muddled mind (or would one accept someone's observational report that he had seen a bird that was red and non-red all over at the same time as a refutation of the law of contradiction rather than the pronouncement of an idiot?) (Hoppe [2006] 1993) Of course, most people, I suspect, have never heard about the Montreal police strike of 1969. They just know that they keep us safe. (The latter "they" being the government.) Pinker informs us that "in the worst years of the 1970s and 1980s, (the United States) had a homicide rate of around 10 per 100,000, and its notoriously violent cities, like Detroit, had a rate of around 45 per 100,000." (Pinker 2011, 51 & 52) During this period, I'd wager that many Americans unthinkingly uttered the aforementioned bromide even while numerous Americans were being slaughtered. Intelligent "creatures of comfort" are compensated handsomely because they compose pithy, statist, "bumper sticker" statements such as this for the masses to parrot. Whether they're literally true is irrelevant. They are useful to people who benefit from existing arrangements of authority (at least in the short run). Cui bono? Let's assume for the sake of argument that the government really keeps us safe, that not just the homicide rate but the rate of interpersonal violence is zero. Let's imagine that people use this data point to argue the desirability of government. If you'll excuse me, what kind of argument is that? You keep your property safe. Don't you? The slave owner kept his slaves safe ... except when he was whipping them. Of course, this is mere logic not "Science" before which we are expected to cower.

!i"lio#raphy Buchanan, James. ([1969] 1978) "Cost and Choice" Chomsky, Noam & Herman, Edward S. (1979) "The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism" Hayek, F. A. ([1960] 2011) "The Constitution of Liberty" Hazlitt, Henry. ([1946] 1996) "Economics in One Lesson" Hazlitt, Henry. ([1959] 2007) "The Failure of the New Economics" Hobbes, Thomas ([1651] 1985) "Leviathan" Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. ([1993] 2006) "The Economics and Ethics of Private Property" Second Edition Pinker, Steven. (2011) "The Better Angels of Our Nature" Rand, Ayn. ([1957] 1992) "Atlas Shrugged" Rand, Ayn. (1964) "The Virtue of Selfishness" Rothbard, Murray. ([1982] 2002) "The Ethics of Liberty" Simmons, A. John. (1993) "On the Edge of Anarchy" Sowell, Thomas. (1987) "A Conflict of Visions" Sowell, Thomas. (2007) "Basic Economics" Third Edition Tucker, Benjamin. ([1897] 2011) "Instead of a Book" Wootton, David, ed. (1993) "Political Writings of John Locke" Zinn, Howard ([1973] 2002) "Postwar America" Zinn, Howard. ([1990] 2003) "Passionate Declarations"