Statism and the Illusion of Choice

By Sebastian A.B.
C4SS
February 1, 2013

“Power is not to be conquered, it is to be destroyed. It is tyrannical by nature, whether exercised by a king, a dictator or an elected president. The only difference with the parliamentarian ‘democracy’ is that the modern slave has the illusion of choosing the master he will obey. The vote has made him an accomplice to the tyranny that oppresses him. He is not a slave because masters exist; masters exist because he elects to remain a slave.” – Jean-François Brient

The state is that entity which claims a legitimate monopoly on the use of violence in a given territory, according to Max Weber. The Hobbesian, Rousseauvian, Lockean perspectives are that the state arose from a world of chaos by social contract that vested a ruling class with a monopoly on violence (for the good of the people, of course).

The funny thing is, nobody can point to a point when the modern state arose. Perhaps it was a place like Çatalhöyük (ca. 7500 BC) or Sumer (ca. 2900 BC)—where a stratified society was structured on the basis of might. The earliest monarchies, empires, and republics—they are all essentially based in violence.  Inalienable rights were unheard of – if you blasphemed God (or one of his temporal bureaucrats in the Vatican) within the Holy Roman Empire, you could be excommunicated and anyone could kill you without reprisal. Government is rule by some men [sic] over others, nothing more. So is ours—which, let the record show, was built out of slave labor. In some sense, it still is.

One feature unique to states is taxation, or the forcible extraction of property to be used in a way that the victim would not use themselves. It is the only entity that does this. Taxation is theft, everywhere and always. Goods and services like roads, schools and medical care can be and are best provided by the market. The state has no incentive to provide a quality product because it has no competitors. Capital intensive projects are not better handled by the state due to diffusion of responsibility and bureaucratic opacity. Taxation is extortion at gunpoint, a vestige of tribute paid by a subservient group to conquering armies, according to David Graeber, in his 2011 treatise Debt: The First 5,000 Years.

Continue here.