well this *is* interesting. it relies basically on the fact that anarchism is, let's say, an extremely unlikely outcome, that there is no plausible way to get there from here. i admit this in the book! roughly i will take "ought implies can." however we cannot possibly have in mind strong metaphysical possibility here; there are plenty of possible worlds without the political state. many actual cultures have had different modes of organization, including especially tribal cultures. because i think and argue that the state has had and is likely to have disastrous utilitarian effects (only the state, for example, could realistically have devised and deployed atomic weaponry), i think that the long-term prospects of our species and planet are extremely poor. a possible future in which each person comes to cherish rather than fear and despise her own autonomy is, i agree, implausible. but its not metaphysically impossible, and it's kind of our only shot!
It seems like "ought implies can" ought to demand more than just metaphysical possibility, though. For example, it's not metaphysically impossible for us to establish a mars colony by 2010, but presumably we'd reject any normative argument that led us there on grounds of practical impossibility.
alright let me try another move: does cannot imply ought not? that is, let's even stipulate that the state is in some relevant sense inevitable (i stipulate it, but i think it's too strong): that surely does not entail that it's morally justified! the fact that, let's say, martin luther king's death is inevitable does not entail that he deserves death, that it is morally justifiable to assassinate him, for example.
Hmm... that's very interesting. On reflection, I don't think it quite works though. At least, not if one accepts that ought implies can.
Ought implies can has to be able to take the contrapositive -- unless we're willing to throw out the law of excluded middle and say that it's possible for neither ought nor ~ought to be true.
So ought implies can --> ~can implies ~ought. Is "not ought" equivalent to "ought not?" Obviously not. I don't have an obligation to give you fifty dollars, but I'm certainly not forbidden to do so.
But my argument doesn't require "ought not" -- "not ought" is sufficient. Consider: Anarchy is (ex hypothesi) impossible. Therefore, anarchy is not morally required.
I need to make a few more logical assertions here. I take it that the proposition "anarchy is morally required" is equivalent to the proposition "the state is forbidden." I also take it that for all P, if P is not forbidden, P is permitted.
Then, if anarchy is not morally required, the state is not forbidden, and then the state is permitted. (To the extent "justifiable" is stronger than "permitted," I'll weaken to the latter.)
About the King example... I don't think we can translate ought implies can from states of affairs to individual actions (or from one state of affairs to another slightly different one). It seems meaningful to say that the state of affairs "King is dead" was justifiable in the abstract, because something would have killed him (the example can be strengthened by positing another assassin one minute later), but that the state of affairs "King was killed by James Early Ray" is not justifiable. For one thing, the second state of affairs was not inevitable, and in fact was well within James Earl Ray's control.
Likewise, I think my argument is enough to show that having states is permissible in the abstract (i.e., that I can't refuse to obey U.S. law on the grounds that there is no such thing as a legitimate state), but not enough to save any individual from blame for creating a state (should that act be morally culpable).
Paul,
You may be interested to know that Kit Wellman makes essentially the same sort of argument you just made in his book, with John Simmons, "IS THERE A DUTY TO OBEY THE LAW?"
Your last sentence is nearly identical to the sorts of things he argues; i.e. justifying a state in principle does not necessarily justify any given state in practice.
Oh, and I commented in my blog post here.
Surely by 2 you've simply assumed your conclusion. For instance, apart from societies of the past that have lacked a government, Somalia demonstrates that the state is not the natural state of man.
Anarchist thought (from William Godwin to Robert Paul Wolff) is (non-pejoratively speaking) utopian. For what I mean by this, please see the quote from William Galston over at my comment at Public Reason: http://publicreason.net/2008/05/...hat-is-utopian/
There are many prudential reasons and some moral reasons for acknowledging the moral and political legitimacy of would-be democratic States as currently constituted, even if one believes that States frequently violate cherished moral principles and ideals. At least one might imagine there could come a day, with sufficient moral progess, when forms of political organizations other than the State give fuller expression to the triune ideals of the French Revolution. And far short of that, there are even now forms of political organization above and below the state that are increasingly seen as critical to the proper functioning of states and without which the citizens of states cannot flourish.
Gandhi was in many respects both an anarchist and a utopian political thinker (although not, to be sure, as systematic political philosopher). The following summary reveals both the strengths and limitations of anarchist/utopian thought:
‘Gandhi’s fascination as a thinker lies in his inward battle between two opposing attitudes—the Tolstoyan socialist belief that the Kingdom of Heaven is attainable on earth and the Dostoevskian mystical conviction that it can never be materialized. The modern Hindu standpoint has generally been anti-utopian: Rama Rajya lies in the bygone Satya Yuga, and Kali Yuga is the age of unavoidable coercion. Gandhi began by challenging this view under the influence of Tolstoy, but he ended his life with more of a Dostoevskian pessimism. This does not mean that he abandoned either his imaginative, Utopian, political vision or what he called his practical idealism embodied in concrete programs of immediate action. He did not feel that he was wrong to urge men to set themselves, as he did in his own life, seemingly impossible standards, but he came closer to seeing that it is wrong to expect them to do so. [….] “Euclidean” models—of the satyagrahi, of a society based on satya and ahimsa, of Rama Rajya—are not without their value in political theory, but they must not be mistaken for definitely realizable concretions. [….] Gandhi’s concepts of satya, ahimsa and satyagraha, of tapas, and, above all, of the satyagrahi, are such ideal constructions—“Euclidean” models as he himself called them. They do involve a “momentous truth,” but they are also deceptive representations, in a sense. In constructing these, Gandhi was in the oldest political tradition that goes back to classical Chinese and Indian thinkers, and to Plato in the West. They could serve in the serious task of civic education (paideia) provided they are not taken to represent precisely the political realities of the future.' From Raghavan Iyer's The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi (1983 ed.): pp. 383-384.
I've found, in the main, the arguments of Christopher Heath Wellman, David L. Norton, George Klosko, Robert E. Goodin, John Finnis, and William A. Edmundson, among others, to be persuasive as to why one should not be a systematic anarchist in political praxis, which of course does not preclude one from simulataneously working toward anarchist ideals (e.g., I might have prima facie reasons for obeying the laws of the state while living a life that instantiates an anarchist sense of community: Godwin seems to have drawn some inspiration from his daily life for his commitment to and formulation of anarchist ideas, although he ignored the socio-economic and political backdrop that made this anarchist form of community possible in the first instance; cf. Mark Philp's Godwin's Political Justice, 1986), the most basic of which might be said to be identical to that of democratic theory, namely, self-rule. As Edmundson writes, ‘Where what morality requires and what the law requires converge, the philosophical anarchist’s practical recommendation will coincide with that of the state.' I find the following 'Natural Duty Argument" from Wellman persuasive up to the first conclusion, for I don't accept his second conclusion as necessarily following from the premises he lists (although I think, with proper qualifications, it might be rendered acceptable):
The Natural Duty argument:
Premise 1: Government (political society, law) is necessary for human beings. Among other things, this premise assumes the hypothetical ‘state of nature’ is synonymous with coordination and assurance problems and thus without coercive law and government the human condition would be aptly characterized, in Hobbes’ words, as ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’
Premise 2: All persons have a natural moral duty to (one or more):
(a) maximize goodness in the world (e.g., eudaimonia, perfection…)
(b) perform necessary tasks to which they are well suited and support and obey those who perform necessary tasks
(c) respect and defer to those who do necessary tasks by occupying positions of authority
(d) do and promote justice
(e) assist those in peril
Conclusion 1: Therefore all persons have a natural moral duty to:
(a) leave the state of nature and join together with others to create government and law where none exist; and
(b) support and comply with stable and existing governments and law within their jurisdiction (provided they are reasonably just)
Conclusion 2: All persons have a moral duty to obey domestic law.
To some degree, this question is one of scale, for clearly the historical and sociological evidence shows anarchist communities are possible and viable on a comparatively small scale, although there widespread adoption is clearly impossible in the modern world of nation-states (Cf., for example, Pierre Clastres, Society Against the State, 1987, and Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy and Liberty, 1982).
Marcin: I'd say that Somalia actually gives us further reason to accept 2: that when people find themselves without (for whatever reason) a functioning state, there are always those waiting in the wings to try and impose them. In Somalia's case, we can understand the warlords as candidate governments attempting to conquer the territory, and those who live in territory controlled by warlords as being under a government, if a particularly nasty one.
Paul, I think the problem here is that you've decided to call anything a government. This renders your argument free of meaning.
Micha, thanks very much, particularly for the reference -- I think the distinction between justifying states in general and justifying particular states is very important.
I also think there's another distinction, between justifying the creation of a particular state and justifying that particular state's existence. We might think that someone acted blameworthy in instituting a state but that, now that we're in it, it's justifiable to the extent that we have real obligations to obey it. (An analogy from morality generally: suppose a man and a woman are having sex, and the woman lies about being on birth control. That's blamable, but it doesn't relieve the man of the obligation to support the baby that gets produced.)
Marcin, the normative intution underlying the anarchist claim is an objection to coercive, organized attempts to rule over others. Warlords are precisely that.
Patrick: I agree with pretty much everything in your comment -- I chose the ought-implies-can strategy of defending the state primarily because of its normative minimalism -- I tend to think that the perfectionist/natural duty defenses of the state are actually more persuasive, but they're always vulnerable to the simple rejection of the posited duty.
In terms of the utopianism of anarchist thought, I think there's a difference between what we might (with Rawls) call a "realistic utopia" and what we might call an "unrealistic utopia." Problem is, anarchist thought tends to lean toward the unrealistic utopia.
(Robert Paul Wolff's arguments are another issue entirely. I think his notion of autonomy is so strong as to be self-defeating, but that's a topic for another discussion.)
ok i'm posting video versions of some of arguments in "against the state here:
http://www.youtube.com/
view_play...43EE9483B627458
they deal with some of these positions. one main point i make: we could all specify in the abstract a state which would be worthy of allegiance. but since the state is (def) a group of people operating an effective monopoly of force, no state can be constrained to observe these specifications. america is something of a democracy, but when the people actually operating the force want to go to war, or start interning people, there is no restraining them. thus the insane genocidal and war-type disasters that states have unleashed have to be seen to be inevitable, once the state is legitimated.
Paul,
I just happen to think Rawls's notion of a "realistic utopia" is an oxymoron and does not do full justice to the notion of utopian imagination, either conceptually or historically. What he terms a "realistic utopia" is certainly one kind of political theory, but from my vantage point it makes no sense to speak of "realistic" and "unrealistic" utopias....
I agree with you about Wolff(!), but I'm sympathetic to the attempt if only because it highlights a rather different direction with Kantian ideas than one usually finds in political thought.
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