Тег: Hobbes

Where Libertarianism Will Actually Take Root? Spoiler: Probably Not Where You Think.

In the libertarian scene, the United States is considered an “earthly paradise.” How could it be any other way: the First and Second Amendments, the spirit of the Wild West, freedom of speech, the right to self-defense! Mises, Rothbard, Rand – all are connected with America. Meanwhile, old Europe and, especially, Canada and Scandinavia are often dismissively viewed as Trotskyist swamps with exorbitant taxes. But if we dig deeper and look at the very foundation of libertarianism – NAP (the principle of non-aggression) – we’ll see something interesting.

The renowned anthropologist Douglas Fry in his works raises a brilliant topic – so-called Hobbesian beliefs. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes, if you remember, believed that the natural state of man is a “war of all against all.” So, Fry shows that the belief in the “naturalness” of war and violence in the United States is frighteningly widespread, much wider than in other developed countries. In one study, students at universities in Florida and Connecticut were asked whether people have a “war instinct” and whether war is an integral part of human nature. About half of the respondents answered affirmatively! Half of these young, educated people believe that killing your fellow humans – it’s frankly ingrained in our genes.

When the whole world calls America “Pinistan” or another derogatory analogy in their local language, it’s not necessarily envy. It could be a reaction to a culture in which a significant portion of the population normalizes violence and imperialist policies. As Fry notes, this is exactly what Europeans see in America. Of course, on the ground, far from all Americans are like that. But there’s enough of them to repeatedly elect hawks and applaud “precision strikes” against countries that many would not find on a map. Furthermore, if a society sincerely believes that violence is “human nature,” it will inevitably be tolerant of state violence within its own country.

And now let’s take a 180-degree turn. If to triumph the libertarianism and NAP we need an society which organically digests violence, where do we look? Contrary to popular myths, the best chances for libertarian ideas may lie precisely in Europe, Canada, and, paradoxically, Scandinavia.

Yes, there’s a bloated welfare state there now (though that’s pretty common these days). But let’s look at the social base. First, the level of violent crime (especially in Scandinavia) hovers around statistical error compared to America. Second, the overwhelming majority of people feel genuine, deep disgust for war and imperialistic ambitions, not considering it a natural phenomenon for humans. Third, the level of social trust there is colossal.

For a European or Canadian, it’s much harder to sell the idea of pre-emptive war. For them, violence is not “biological instinct,” but a catastrophic system failure, barbarism that simply has no place in the 21st century. And this is precisely the ideal psychological ground for the principle of non-aggression! NAP cannot win where many are ready to shoot first. NAP wins where people have internally agreed that initiating violence is an absolute social taboo.

So, perhaps we should stop idealizing cowboys and take a look at, say, Swedes or Norwegians. Yes, they still have a lot to explain, for example, that high taxes are also a form of hidden, systemic violence. But convincing a peaceful burgher who rejects aggression in principle may be much easier than persuading a supporter of preemptive bombing in the name of greatness.

Here you can see irony: “American” libertarianism is stuck in a country whose cultural code resists it. And where libertarians are used to seeing “socialism,” the basic premise of their philosophy – that people are not obligated to be violent – has already been accepted as common sense. Maybe we should stop banging our heads against a wall and look where the door is slightly open?

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The Myth of Eternal War: How Did Hobbes Deceive Us?

Once, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes confidently stated that the natural state of humanity is an endless “war of all against all.” Sounds familiar, right? This concept has become so ingrained that we sometimes forget to check its truthfulness. But in reality, it turns out that people are not as bloodthirsty by nature as we are led to believe.

Take, for example, the well-known story of anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, who claimed that killers among the Yanomami tribe were more successful in reproducing. The idea is clear and frightening: kill more, and you will have three times as many children! It sounds too harsh to be true, and indeed, it later turned out that Chagnon “stretched the truth” a bit—he was comparing elderly killers with young non-killers. And independent research showed that killers in tribal societies do not reproduce faster than others; in fact, to be honest, fewer of their children survive.

And in general, who said that wars are the norm? A famous myth from Steven Pinker goes like this: 15% of the prehistoric population constantly perished in wars until states emerged and brought order. Great advertising for the state, isn’t it? Except that archaeology shows something completely different: violent deaths in pre-cultural societies were no more than 2%. Moreover, the emergence of states did not reduce the level of violence at all. On the contrary, the first large structures often fueled conflicts and increased the percentage of killings to about 5%.

It is worth noting that anthropologists may unconsciously reinforce the notion of the inevitability of war. For example, researchers “record” groups as warlike that actually hardly ever fought, simply because of the presence of weapon images in rock paintings. But these images do not necessarily evidence actual aggression: weapons could have been used for hunting or symbolic ceremonies. As a result, a false impression is created that ancient people were constantly at war.

Data on so-called “simple” hunter-gatherer societies is also quite telling. Despite being depicted in many works as brutal and always ready to fight, in reality, they are the ones characterized by extremely low levels of aggression and violence. Real war is a rarity for them, not the norm. Conversely, societies with a complex social structure and a more developed hierarchy more often become participants in conflicts and wars. Interesting, isn’t it? It turns out that the more complex a society is, the more conflict and aggression it generates.

Furthermore, many proponents of the Hobbesian perspective fully acknowledge this fact, but they try not to emphasize it, seriously studying only cases of “complex” societies, as, for example, Lawrence Keeley did in the work “War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage.” Alternatively, they may simply categorize “complex” societies as “simple,” subsequently labeling the latter as warlike.

In general, peaceful coexistence is the norm for many peoples. Thus, a study of 590 cultures from around the world showed an absence of wars in as many as 64% of them. Of course, they might have defended themselves against attacks, but initiating attacks is something only a minority of cultures engage in.

So why do we continue to believe in the myth of a human nature doomed to eternal war? Perhaps the problem here is habit—this belief was passed from generation to generation without critical reflection. Or perhaps someone intentionally maintains this myth to justify the existence of a strong and powerful state “saving” us from ourselves.

Let’s admit it to ourselves: the idea that people are by nature inclined toward peace and cooperation sounds much more realistic, optimistic, and attractive. Perhaps it is time for us to stop considering peace a utopia and start seeing it as a natural part of human life. After all, as history and research show, peaceful communities are not the exception, but rather the rule. So is it worth continuing to cling to gloomy Hobbesian imagery? Probably not. It is time to stop allowing fears to dictate our view of humanity and start trusting each other a bit more!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Pinker’s Error – has society become more peaceful because of the emergence of the state?

Voluntarist, Bitarch

One of Steven Pinker’s well-known works is the book “The Better Angels of Our Nature.” Based on it, societies that existed before the emergence of agricultural civilizations with cities and monopoly governments suffered from chronic violence and endless wars, and the level of violence has steadily declined over time, partly due to the monopolization of power and law. But has violence actually decreased, did the emergence of the state play an important role in this, and is man cruel by nature?

According to Pinker, for hunter-gatherer societies, the average level of lethal violence was as high as 14%. But where does this data come from? Analyzing it, anthropologists Douglas Fry and Brian Ferguson found that it is inaccurate and represents “cherry-picking”[1][2]. For example, Pinker provides homicide data for 8 tribal peoples, yet he does not mention that in the case of two of them (the Hiví and the Ache), all killings were related to the extermination of the indigenous population by border guards. Meanwhile, the tribes tried to live in peace with one another. Taking these and other similar cases explained by colonialism into account, Pinker’s estimate can already be reduced by half, to 7%.

But other data of his are also doubtful. Modern tribes have been “infected” by colonialists, slave traders, globalization, and simply farming. They have little in common with the tribes that lived thousands of years ago. Additionally, anthropologists may prefer to study more violent societies. 20% of Pinker’s data are provided by a single person—Napoleon Chagnon, who is criticized within the anthropological community, makes methodological errors, and was even exiled from one tribe due to intrusive interference.

Using a different approach, Fry reviewed a sample of 186 societies studied by anthropologists. Only 24 of them were hunter-gatherers, and only 8 had many mentions. In the case of 7 of these 8 societies, killings were reported as a rare or even entirely absent phenomenon. He also searched anthropological literature for cultures that never waged war. He counted as many as 70 such cultures.

As Pinker claims, citing 21 archaeological excavations, 15% of savages died from violence. However, some of this data is very limited and may also be misinterpreted. For example, burials of people with arrowheads may simply mean that they were hunters.

Can better evidence be provided? A study of up to 3,000 remains found in France showed 1.9% cases of lethal injuries. It is not on Pinker’s list. Nor are studies of 350 remains in Britain with 2%, 418 remains in Serbia and Romania with 2.3%, or 2,500 in Japan with 2% traces of lethal violence. A study of 1,107 remains in Europe showed a minimum estimate of 3.7% and a maximum of 5.5% lethal violence. Not even close to Pinker’s 15%.

Finally, all examples cited by Pinker are no older than 12,000 years, meaning they could have been influenced by the agricultural revolution. And as anthropologist Leslie Sponsel writes, “at the stage of hunter-gatherer cultural evolution, which dominated 99% of human existence… the absence of archaeological evidence of war suggests that they were rare or absent throughout most of human prehistory.”

Ultimately, the following data on the level of lethal violence can be derived: 2% for hunter-gatherers, up to 5% for societies after the agricultural revolution, 7% for modern hunter-gatherers, 5% for early states, and 3% for the 20th century. They confirm Ferguson’s theory that wars suddenly emerged in a world without war due to the complication of social structure, as well as Fry’s words that we are dealing not with a continuous decline in the level of violence, but with an n-type curve.

People in hunter-gatherer societies—a social structure closest to the natural state of man—lived in peace and solved many problems without violence long before the state imposed discipline upon them. There was no Hobbesian “war of all against all,” and the data indicating otherwise are inaccurate and selective.

What is the difference between natural law and positive law?

Libertarianism is based on natural rights; why is Svetov against them?

анонимный вопрос

In a recent video by Mikhail Svetov, which your question is about, much seemed strange to me. Since that is the case, I will first go through the entire video and then move on to the topic of the question, so as not to make two posts about one video.

To begin with, Svetov uses a definition of anarchy as a Hobbesian war of all against all. I don’t remember if Hobbes used the exact word anarchy; I recall the term state of nature more. However, in our video on the deterrence doctrine, I tried to show that a war of all against all is not the natural state of society, meaning that Hobbesian (and Svetovian) rhetoric is based on a dubious foundation.

Svetov also uses the word rights as a synonym for the word privileges, thereby limiting himself to so-called positive rights. This is indicated by his phrase “fear people who want to grant you rights.” Libertarian discourse, however, usually concerns negative rights, which are freedoms. One is not “granted” such rights, because their realization does not require the actions of others; non-interference is entirely sufficient.

In attacking liberals, Svetov implies progressives of the American type, given that he uses headlines about minority quotas and affirmative action as illustrations. In Europe, they more often call themselves social democrats, and it is unclear to me why Svetov separates them from socialists at all, saying that from one side we are pressed by a socialist boot and from the other by a liberal one, while in fact he is speaking of the same socialist boot.

Another interesting point: Svetov opposes morality and conscience, claiming that evil liberals removed conscience from man and replaced it with morality. However, Svetov does not define what conscience is and where it comes from, if not from the experience of interacting with other people and the memory of their moral evaluations. Or does he want to say that conscience is the voice of God? Well, in that case, it is unclear what he has against natural rights, understood as divine decrees.

Another phrase that Svetov uses in his video: “where there is no law, there is no crime.” Yes, that is correct; crime is a term from positive law, which is a system of commands. There is a command, someone violates the command, they have committed a crime. In private law, there are no crimes; there is property damage, breach of contractual obligations, and so on, and the person who suffered the damage is free to oppose this and demand compensation—or not oppose it and not demand it.

Thus, I would say that Svetov’s video is simply a juggling of terms. We define anarchy in a way that no anarchist defines it, after which we prove as simply as two plus two that anarchy is bad, and even that the state is anarchy. Everything is logical, but we get nothing but confusion in the end.

Now let’s return to the question of whether libertarianism grows out of natural law. Historically, yes, but today that is not important because human thought has not stood still. We can derive libertarian principles deductively based on the laws of logic: here is an apodictically true statement that a person belongs to themselves; now we show that any attempt to refute this statement implicitly relies on the very premise we are trying to refute. Those whose brains haven’t melted have grasped the Tao and discovered natural law. Or we can examine human interactions and show which behavioral strategies prove more advantageous and therefore survive through natural selection. This utilitarian approach gives us the same libertarian principles, but in this case, the laws of logic do not stick out as if they were god-given and people were merely objects under them. Therefore, such an approach is less irritating to people like the hypothetical Mikhail Svetov with their obsession with ethics, but more so to connoisseurs of mathematical rigor.

Personally, I first became acquainted with Rothbard and the Hoppean derivation of the principle of self-ownership, and then with Hayek and the Friedmanite utilitarian justification of property, and I suggest not arguing over whom to love more—father or mother. Both praxeology and spontaneous orders are two equally useful methodological principles; let us use both, depending on the situation, rather than imitating Svetov, who is so right-wing that he tries to bite off libertarianism’s left leg.