Chapter 5, “Social Power vs. State Power,” p. 5.

42 Records only go back to 1816, at which time, according to TABLE Ea894–903 ofthe Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Online Edition(hsus.cambridge.org/HSUSWeb/HSUSEntryServlet), there were a total of 4,837 federal employees, rising to 399,381 in 1916 and reflecting a growth rate over 8,200%. Working backwards to 1790, then, 2,500 federal employees at that time is a very generous estimate and could well have been significantly lower.

43 See Wikipedia, “Demographics of the United States / Population Growth,” here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Population_growth44 Christopher Lee, “Big Government Gets Bigger; Study Counts More Employees,Cites Increase in Contractors,” The Washington Post, October 6, 2006, p. A21; online version here:www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/05/AR2006100501782.html.

45 See the U.S. Census Bureau’s “U.S. POPClock Projection,” here:www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html.

average citizen pays over $10,000 a year in inflation-adjusted terms,46 amounting to a growth rate of fully 50,000%.

And little wonder, as well, that the legal apparatus that propels the process is equally out of control. After all, the laws on the books in the United States have long been beyond counting, and Congress has no interest in capping them for the simple reason that by doing so it would put its members out of a job. What Congress does instead—with the full support of the other two branches of government—is to secure the jobs of its members through the passage of one positivist statute, project, and program after another. And thus do we confront a fundamental difference between negative and positivist law: while negative law tends not to multiply beyond necessity, positivist law invariably does. So even though it makes vastly more sense for society to be ruled by the paucity of the former than by the profligacy of the latter—precisely as the well-established Principle of Parsimony47 suggests— the latter nonetheless prevails.

Furthermore, legal positivism not only creates new laws but, in the process, new “rights.” And as distinct from the few and very real rights upon which civil society is based—i.e., as distinct from the non-intervention of the negative golden rule—positivist rights are inherently interventionist in that, as grants of privilege, they impose obligations on some for the benefit of others. Be it food, housing, healthcare, employment, education, retirement, or some other “entitlement,” others—namely, taxpayers—are forced to pay for them, meaning that individuals’ legitimate rights are ipso facto violated in spite of the fact that every “entitlement” comes at a cost greater to society than the benefit received.48

Moreover, because ignorantia juris non excusat—”ignorance of the law is no excuse”—it is inevitable that as the legal apparatus expands, certainty of the law—which “is probably the most important requirement for the economic activities of society”49—becomes impossible. And thus is the social enterprise set adrift upon a sea of uncertainty, its compass useless amid the

46 See WSJ Opinion Archives, “Mr. Stossel Goes to Washington,” January 26, 2001,here: www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=85000497.

47 “One should always choose the simplest explanation of a phenomenon, the onethat requires the fewest leaps of logic; see Principia Cybernetica Web, “Principle of Parsimony or Principle of Simplicity,” here:pespmc1.vub.ac.be/asc/PRINCI_SIMPL.html.

48 This is so for the simple reason that the associated taxes are not loans to be repaidat an agreed-upon interest rate, nor are they investments made with the expectation of a risk-worthy return. Rather, the money is simply confiscated with the promise that the “entitlement” will accrue to society’s overall benefit.

49 Ibid., Leoni, p. 70.

perfect storm of legal positivism; thus does legislation result not in law at all but lawlessness; and thus does it subject society to the nullification of the complex by the of the institutionalization of the complicated. For even though the words are generally considered to be synonymous, a subtle but vitally important distinction can be made between the complex and the complicated vis-à-vis the unintended consequences of the market versus those of the state.

We are all familiar, of course, with Adam Smith’s famous passage in TheWealth of Nations regarding “the invisible hand,”50 whereby the individual, in pursuit of his own interests, “frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it,” doing so in recognition of the fact that “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest.” Thus do we “address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”

And simply put, this is how the market functions—i.e., as an endeavor in which people cooperate in recognition one another’s self-interest—the result of which, with the introduction of money, is complexity on a scale that would be unattainable—indeed, unimaginable—on the level of subsistence or barter. And we have but to consider an age-old board game, chess, to understand this. For its simple and certain rules, which virtually anyone can comprehend, provide for a permutation of moves in an all but infinite variety, the elegance of which has attracted humanity’s finest minds since the game’s invention, more recently pitting high-powered computers against them.51 In other words, what makes chess so elegant is precisely what makes the market so elegant, their respective rules being so few, certain, and understandable that each is all but unlimited in the complexity it can generate, said complexity adding commensurately to the enjoyment of life.

Not so for, say, the U.S. tax code, which was only a few pages long at the time of its introduction in 1913 but is now nearly seven times the length of the Bible,52 requiring some 7.6 billion work-hours of tax compliance each year53 at a cost that is projected to rise from over a quarter trillion dollars

50 As summarized by Wikipedia here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_of_Nations#The_invisible_hand.

51 See a summary of IBM’s “Deep Blue” chess computer here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Deep_Blue.

52 See “How long is the US Tax Code?” at the Trygve.com digital diary, March 12,2006, here: www.trygve.com/taxcode.html.

53 See USA Today, “New Report: Doing taxes takes up to 7.6 billion work hours ayear,” January 9, 2009, here: www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2009-01-07-tax—compliance-costs_N.htm.

today to nearly half a trillion dollars by 2015.54 So incomprehensible that not even one of the world’s most renowned geniuses could understand it,55 the U.S. tax code constitutes drudgery on a massive scale, detracting in like proportion from the quality of life and doing so solely to transfer power from society to the state.

And thus do we arrive at the vital distinction between the rule of law and its ruin—i.e., between that which generates spontaneous order and that which degenerates into one regimented order after another—as it leads us to this critically important conclusion: Society is inherently complex and accordingly unlimited in the amount of order it can generate, while the state is inherently complicated and accordingly unlimited in the amount of disorder it can generate.

In light, then, of the rampant disorder with which we are now confronted, it is clear that in positivizing society’s money and its law, the state has not only toppled the twin pillars of civilization; it has shattered the foundation upon which they stand. For it has destroyed the freedom that is society’s sine qua non and thus imperiled society’s very existence.

But how could it have done so? And why has it done so?

In other words, what is the state? And how did it come to be?

7. The Nature and Origin of the State

The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. —Albert Jay Nock

It is imperative that we understand, first of all, that “[e]verything the state is capable of doing it does through compulsion and the application of force.”56 The state cannot give without taking, in other words, and it cannot take without the initiation of force or the threat thereof. Even apologists for the state cannot deny this fact.57

54 See Scott A. Hodge, J. Scott Moody, and Wendy P. Warcholik, Ph.D, “The RisingCost of Complying with the Federal Income Tax,” Tax Foundation, January 10, 2006, The Tax Foundation Special Report, here:www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/1281.html.

55 “The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.” —AlbertEinstein

56 Ibid., Mises; see Liberalism in the Classical Tradition, Chapter 1, “The Foundations ofLiberal Policy,” Section 13, “The State and Antisocial Conduct,” here: www.mises.org/liberal/ch1sec13.asp.

57 See Wikipedia, “Monopoly on violence,” here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_the_legitimate_use_of_physical_force. 16 LIBERTARIAN PAPERS 1, 32 (2009)

Neither can its apologists deny (at least convincingly) that “every State has been and is a class State, and every theory of the State has been and is a class theory,”58 acknowledgement of which can be found as far back as Plato, who addressed the origin of the ruling class, in both The Statesman and The Republic, by harkening back to a time when nomad tribes first came to live under a patriarch: These nomad tribes, we hear, settled in the cities of thePeloponnese, especially in Sparta, under the name of “Dorians.” …

In a parallel passage in The Republic, Plato gives us a mythological yetvery pointed description of the conquest itself, when dealing withthe origin of the “earthborn,” the ruling class of the best city. Theirvictorious march into the city, previously founded by the tradesmenand workers, it described as follows: “After having armed andtrained the earthborn, let us now make them advance, under thecommand of the guardians, till they arrive in the city. Then let themlook round to find out the best place for their camp—the spot thatis most suitable for keeping down the inhabitants, should anyoneshow unwillingness to obey the law, and for holding back externalenemies who may come down like wolves on the fold.” This shortbut triumphant tale of the subjugation of a sedentary population bya conquering war horde … must be kept in mind when we interpretPlato’s reiterated insistence that good rulers ... are patriarchalshepherds of men, and that the true political art, the art of ruling, isa kind of herdsmanship, i.e., the art of managing and keeping downhuman cattle.59

Even so, Plato’s pupil Aristotle rejected this “art,” placing the origin of the state more palatably, albeit mistakenly, at the end of a purely organic process: The belief in the kinship origin of the State has been among themost deeply rooted manifestations of the Western faith indevelopment continuity. The popularity of the belief owes much toAristotle’s celebrated triadic scheme of evolution—from family tocommunity to State—and has been nourished in modern times byfrequent appeals to irrelevant and historically unconnectedethnographic materials. As is true in so many other alleged instancesof developmental continuity, the fact of logical continuity has been

58 Franz Oppenheimer, The State, Copley Publishing, 1914, p. 4; online version here:www.franz-oppenheimer.de/state0.htm.

59 Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Princeton University Press, NewJersey, 1962, 1966, p. 49.

converted into the supposition of historical continuity within aspecific area or chronology.60

Moreover, not only was it assumed, following Aristotle, that “from such an original social order … there had developed, through gradual differentiation, the fully developed State with its class hierarchy;”61 it was also assumed that said order developed because all productive land had been settled: All the teachers of natural law, etc., have unanimously declared thatthe differentiation into income-receiving classes and propertylessclasses can only take place when all fertile lands have been occupied.

For so long as man has ample opportunity to take up unoccupiedland, “no one,” says Turgot, “would think of entering the service ofanother” …

… The philosophers of natural law, then, assumed that completeoccupancy of the ground must have occurred quite early, because ofthe natural increase of an originally small population. They wereunder the impression that at their time, in the eighteenth century, ithad taken place many centuries previous, and they naively deducedthe existing class aggroupment from the assumed conditions of thatlong-past point in time.62

Never questioning their assumptions, however, it simply did not occur to these thinkers that they could

… determine with approximate accuracy the amount of land ofaverage fertility in the temperate zone, and also what amount issufficient to enable a family of peasants to exist comfortably, or howmuch such a family [could] work with its own forces, withoutengaging outside help or permanent farm servants. … Let us assumethat, in these modern times, thirty morgen (equal to twenty acres)for the average peasant suffices to support a family. …

… [T]here are still on the earth’s surface, seventy-three billion, twohundred million hectares (equal to on hundred eighty billion, eighthundred eighty million and four hundred sixteen thousand acres);dividing into the first amount the number of human beings [at thetime, 1914]…viz., one billion, eight hundred million, every family offive persons could possess about thirty morgen (equal to eighteenand a half acres), and still leave about two-thirds of the planet unoccupied.

60 Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom,ICS Press, 1990 (Oxford University, 1953), pp. 90 and 91.

61 Ibid., Oppenheimer, p. xix.

62 Ibid., p. 6.

If, therefore, purely economic causes are ever to bring about adifferentiation into classes by the growth of a propertyless laboringclass, the time has not yet arrived. …

… As a matter of fact, however, for centuries past, in all parts of theworld, we have had a class-state, with possessing classes on top andpropertyless laboring classes at the bottom, even when populationwas much less dense than it is today. Now it is true that the class-state can arise only where all fertile acreage has been occupiedcompletely; and since … all the ground is not occupiedeconomically, this must mean that it has been preempted politically.

Since land could not have acquired “natural scarcity,” the scarcitymust have been “legal.” This means that the land has beenpreempted by a ruling class against its subject class, and settlementprevented. Therefore, the State, as a class-state, can have originatedin no other way than through conquest and subjugation.63

Thus, while it would be too much to say that property is theft,64 it is not at all be too much to say that insofar as people have historically found themselves without property, it is not because those “best endowed with strength, wisdom, capacity for saving, industry and caution, slowly acquire[d] a basic amount of real or movable property; while the stupid and less efficient, and those given to carelessness and waste, remain[ed] without possessions.”65 Rather, one group has simply forced itself on another group … with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of thevictorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself againstrevolt from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, thisdominion had no other purpose than the economic exploitation ofthe vanquished by the victors.66

And thus do we come to the all-important distinction between society and the state:

There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man,requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means forsatisfying his desires. There are work and robbery, one’s own laborand the forcible appropriation of the labor of others … the“economic means” … and the “political means.”

63 Ibid., pp. 6 and 7.

64 See Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What Is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principleof Right and of Government, summarized in Wikipedia here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_is_theft.

65 Ibid., Oppenheimer, p. 5.

66 Ibid., p. 8.

The state is an organization of the political means. No state,therefore, can come into being until the economic means hascreated a definite number of objects for the satisfaction of needs,which objects may be taken away or appropriated by warlikerobbery.67

In other words, the state creates and sustains itself through aggression— i.e., through the initiation of force—first through its conquest of territory, then through the twofold process of subjugating the inhabitants to its territorial monopoly on aggression, which it then uses to confiscate the inhabitants’ property via the legalized theft of taxation.

And no matter how successful it has been in indoctrinating its people to believe otherwise (and of course it has been enormously successful), the American state is in no way an exception. On the contrary, it is thoroughly an organization of the political means, as were the colonies that preceded it: The first fortunes on the virgin continent were out-and-out politicalcreations—huge tracts of [conquered] land and lucrative tradingprivileges arbitrarily bestowed by the British and Dutch crownsupon favorite individuals and companies. ... The early royal grants… were the sole property titles of the newly created landedaristocrats.68

And while the received truth regarding the subsequent creation of a constitutional republic is decidedly different—nothing less than a “miracle,” in fact69—the real truth is that the United States Constitution, like all constitutions, was “not instituted to limit government but rather to enhance the political power of an elite that [sought] to entrench itself.”70 After all, the United States Constitution was written by and for a small class of property-owning adult white males who limited the vote almost exclusively to themselves, creating an oligarchy that, in positivizing law and money at the outset,71 was destined to become evermore tyrannical, as indeed it has.

Thus, instead of the “model for the protection of man in a state of freedom and order” that Jefferson imagined it to be,72 the American state was from its founding a model of conquest and subjugation—not only of the

67 Ibid., pp. 12 and 13.

68 Ferdinand Lundberg, America’s Sixty Families, Vanguard Press, 1937, p. 50.

69 Catherine Drinker Bowen, Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the ConstitutionalConvention, Little Brown, 1986.

70 See Jeffrey A. Tucker, “Hoppeism and the Bailout,” Ludvig von Mises Institute;August 6, 2002, here: www.mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1021.

71 The United States Constitution, Article 1, Sections 1 and 8.

72 Letter to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1799; see Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Governmenthere: etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1800.htm.

continent’s millions of native inhabitants and the millions of others imported from another continent, but of the human detritus endlessly washing up on its shores from elsewhere.73 As such, the American state is simply another state and, like any state, is therefore “an evil inflicted on men by men”74—one that persists solely through the acquiescence of the people, who, having been thoroughly indoctrinated by their government, are only too willing to accede to its never-ending demands. And to make matters worse, even some who are not indoctrinated but, on the contrary, recognize the state as the evil that it is, compound that evil by maintaining that the preservation of society nonetheless “justifies the action of the organs of the state.”75

This is a very serious proposition—so serious, in fact, that the very foundation of human morality hangs in the balance, and with it the very viability of civil society. If, therefore, humanity is to have any hope of ridding itself of the state, it must be shown that because the state is inherently evil, there can be no justification for its existence.

So to this task we now turn, via another brief foray into metaphysics.

8. Evil and the State

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil. —Thomas Paine

If the state is “an evil inflicted by men on men,” yet the preservation of society nonetheless “justifies the action of the organs of the state,” then the inescapable conclusion is that the state is indeed “a necessary evil.” But how can this be? How can this or any other evil be necessary without rendering evil itself necessary? And if evil itself is necessary, then what of right and wrong, and thus of human morality? For surely the necessity of evil renders human morality null and void, as any action, no matter how heinous, can therefore be justified. Law is then whatever anyone says it is who has the power to back it up; might then makes right; and the state, which is solely an instrument of might, is then the only “legitimate” authority. Thus absolute, it is accordingly deified, in which case Hegel’s horrifying assertion that the state

73 “[P]oor laborers will be so plenty [sic] as to render slavery useless.” —Revolutionary Connecticutian Oliver Ellsworth replying to revolutionary Virginian George Mason, as quoted by Forrest McDonald in Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution, the University Press of Kansas, 1985, p. 51.

74 See Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism, Part 1: “The Foundations of Liberal Policy,”