So, this final chapter discusses the implications of the evidence presented, and pushes supporters of the hobbesian hypothesis into a corner, in which they have to confront the evidence in some ways if they want to reasonably continue to argue their points. I'm mostly going to be approaching these options from my own perspective here, as someone who kinda sorta accepts the concept of the state on vaguely hobbesian terms, but also feels uncomfortable with the hypothesis, especially considering the evidence presented.
Clarify the argument
Here, Widerquist and McCall argue that contractarians and propertarians need to clarify the argument. I would do so in this way. First of all, yes, the state does not ensure that every single person is better off than they would be in the state of nature. That version of the proviso is a complete and utter fail based on this book. But, I tend to look at things in terms of "where we are." We live in an era where states control every inch of liveable land in the world, and there is no place to escape. And if we were to abolish the state tomorrow, what would come from that is a whole lot of death and destruction. it would be chaos. Sure, people raised in the state of nature can adapt to the state of nature, but modern humanity does not live in anything resembling the state of nature. If you dropped most modern humans off in the middle of the woods and told them to figure it out from there, many of them would die. We have left that way of life, those ways are forgotten, and I can't imagine a post state US not looking like something like fallout or the walking dead or something. I just see millions of people needing modern medicine only a modern society can support suddenly dying, and people fighting over the scraps of civilization left. Keep in mind we live in a society with property, and people post state would still think in terms of property. It's all they know. So they would fight over territory and blah blah blah. And eventually the most brutal factions that win...would become the new state. I'm sorry, but the genie is out of the bottle, there's no going back to a pre state world, and it's quite frankly not worth talking about.
Challenge empirical findings
Oh, don't get me wrong. I accept the findings. if anything it actually helps fine tune my worldview and fills in gaps I struggled with in crafting my worldview from the grounds up. If I continue with the book idea, this book has helped me. A LOT. Because I did kinda feel like I accepted the proviso, but at the same time, I understand that a lot of the enlightenment era political philosophy our modern society is based on is kind of applied ex post facto. Like, they pretty much created a legal fiction justifying the state after thousands of years of its existence, and that the actual empirical history of early states is...not very pleasant at all. I mean, I'm pretty much convinced that the original sin of humanity, if such an original sin existed, was creating states. I mean, you got these hyper aggressive individuals who managed to take over land and force everyone to submit to them, and they ruled over them with an iron fist, killing, torturing, enslaving them along the way. I mean, given these states did arise from a darwinistic state of nature, they just pretty much enforced their will on everyone. BUT...here's the thing. That was the model of governance that won natural selection. States are so successful at ruthlessly wiping out any alternative, that now we're left with nothing but states. And states changed humans. Our way of living is altered by states to the point I think removing them at this point is a bad idea. Because we've adapted to them. In some ways the hobbesian hypothesis is a self fulfilling prophecy. We domesticated humans within the confines of the state, where if we suddenly removed it, it would be a war against all. Explaining how humans lived before states doesnt mean that they'll suddenly go back to that after removing the state. It's like expecting someone addicted to crack to go back to how they were as if they never came across crack. Our dependence on statehood is comparable to that.
But yeah, either way, I accept their findings. I even had suspicions before this that yeah, most modern states arose through violence and we kinda just justified them retroactively. Oh well, too late now. Can't go back.
Concede the findings but blame the government
I know right libertarians like to do this. They are anti government, and everything wrong is because of government, but they still think that their property claims are still valid through natural rights theory, when...they're not. Either tribal societies dont accept property, or they fight over it. In some ways property is that original sin. A lot of the problems with states is a matter of property. Once we moved beyond mere subsistence level foraging, we gave humans a reason to be violent with one another. And that's why humans acclimated to the state can't suddenly live without it. Property is like a drug. A highly addictive drug that makes people highly violent. And we're all crack babies at this point. We all are born addicted to this stuff, because this stuff, in some ways, is a plato's cave on its own.
Anyway, only right libertarians would actually do this, because they want to be anti government but maintain their property rights basically based on some equivalent of divine command theory. Which is nonsense.
"If the state of nature is not real statelessness, what is it?"
I guess this is people trying to pull a no real scotsman, and argue that the state of nature is a metaphor.
Honestly, the state of nature is kind of...ahistorical. It assumes that humans are solitary, individualist creatures who lived apart from each other and that any interaction was risky and rife with suspicion. In reality, before modern governments, people were tribal. In some ways, if you just treat a state as any form of government, even "band societies" widerquist described were governments. IN some ways, we never didn't have some sort of social contract or self governance, it was just on a very small scale. As atheists would put it in a meme i saw recently as for why an atheist would save a drowning person, "apes together strong." In some ways, I would actually redefine things in such a way to consider even tribal societies a form of "government." In that sense, I still would argue the core idea behind social contract theory is valid, I'd just recognize that in the past people had more options, while labeling the modern state as a more modern and oppressive invention that has been slowly reformed over the centuries.
"Bracketing: "ought implies can" and the worldwide civil war
This involves a bunch of different arguments, many of which not relevant to my own ideology, so I'll let his own points stand. My only real argument is against his criticisms against the whole idea that we cant dismantle the state. He sees is at a situation in which we need to provide evidence that it would cause mass destruction. I would argue he needs to demonstrate that it would not. We have a good thing, I believe revolutions are risky, they can very well go wrong, and that any time we advocate for a major societal change, we need to make the case for it. This comes from my prior conservative outlook in the christian worldview in which we were to fear the dangers of utopianism and admit that any attempt to radically change the world carries the very real risk of disaster. Just because I have become more open to change doesnt mean that I dont hold people to standards. I demand evidence for any policy presented, including the abolishment of the state and all policies, on the grounds that we can demonstrate that doing so would produce positive effects that are worth it. I dont think abolishing the state would do that. It carries the very real risk of a civil war, and I really don't think Widerquist and McCall appreciate the danger of what they're suggesting here.
"Fulfill the proviso"
Yeah, this is where I'm at. And I would obviously agree with his preferred policies like UBI. Much like him, I think adapting the Rawlsian idea of the veil of ignorance and combining it with left libertarian principles to give people as much liberty as they can within the confines of the state is the best idea we can do. I acknowledge Widerquist and McCall's evidence and arguments that we did not fulfill the proviso, I also accept that abolishing the state is not a realistic option, so I believe that states are to make life as positive for citizens as possible. I believe that states should exist to serve us, not the other way around. Politicians are "public servants" in the sense that they serve us. They are responsible to us, and we are to hold them accountable. I believe that things adopted over the centuries like rights are largely a positive thing, protecting people from the excesses of government. I believe that separation of powers to constrain the excesses is also positive. But I tend to also be critical of the property rights system. While I acknowledge that some sort of property system has to exist in a complex society such as ours, we need some system to distribute resources and alternatively work to create those resources, ultimately, these should be done in a way that maintains peoples' freedom as much as possible. The existing system doesn't do that. It is designed to coerce people to work their lives away under the threat of propertylessness and subjects them to a process in which they are not free to live as they want, but have much of their lives dictated to them by a tyrannical boss. I believe that society should liberate people from that to the greatest degree possible, and that we should strive toward a society where we work less, and that work is more voluntary.
And yeah, I feel like this book helped me focus my worldview a bit more. I do plan on reading Widerquist's other book on this subject, "the prehistory of private property", but I won't do that now. I feel like I've been working overtime reading this book and in consistency with my own ideology regarding the liberation of work and how we should work as much or as little as I want, being my own boss, I'm gonna take some time off. Not a ton though as I am fired up on this subject, but yeah, I admit I've been overdoing it and I should take a break to compensate.
No comments:
Post a Comment