The Liberty Lamp: Libertarian News & Editorials

Voluntary vs. Coercive Utopias

Some wish only to persuade us to live our lives in accordance with their ideals for us. They would have us voluntarily become members of their utopian societies. Some of them are leaders of religious sects, who urge us to adopt their way of life voluntarily, through conversion to their beliefs; such were the pacifist Tolstoy colonies at the turn of the century. Others are secular, such as B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two, and would have us join their commune so that we can all taste of the “better life” which they believe their utopia has to offer.

Voluntary utopias are relatively harmless; an individual can belong to one or not as he chooses, and can get out of it if it turns out not to be to his liking. It does not interfere with a person’s freedom, as long as he is free to decide for himself. But the vast majority of utopias, such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, are coercive: a plan of life is laid out for everyone, and even if a person does not want any part of it, he must be forced to, “for his own good.” The authors of such utopias would use the enormous coercive machinery of the law to make sure that others behave as the authors wish them to, against their will if necessary.

Why this “moral busybodyism”? Why do some people desire to plan the lives of others? Sometimes it originates in their own inadequacy and insecurity: they cannot manage their own lives, so they divert attention from their own inadequacies by managing the lives of others. Sometimes as children they were constantly required to do things against their will: having been constantly pushed around, they now want more than anything else to push other people around—never mind that the people they push around are not the same people who pushed them around. Often they simply believe that the great mass of people are stupid clods, incapable of governing their own lives, and that by telling others what to do they are doing them a favor; people are clay in need of a potter, so the utopian enters the scene as a savior, to save others from their own stupidity and ineptitude.

More often still, the authors of utopias are not as much convinced that others are stupid as that they themselves are persons of supreme intelligence, who have such a great vision for the human race, and see so clearly what is good for others, that the others can’t possibly have as great a vision for themselves. Moreover, they believe that this superior intelligence gives them the right to dictate what course the lives of others should take. When such people obtain high positions in government, or become the power behind the throne, they become the most destructive persons in history, masking their power-impulse with humanitarian slogans about the common good.

Contrasting Effects of Economic vs. Political Power

Power over other people’s lives need not itself be evil; that depends on what kind of power it is and to what end it is wielded. A great teacher may have enormous influence over a student’s life, but that power is wielded not by force but by the strength or credibility of the teacher’s ideas, or the example set by his life. A parent has power over a child’s life, for good or for ill, teaching the child morality and consideration and courtesy. A counselor or psychiatrist may exert power over a patient, so as to remove the obstacles to the patient’s development and enable him better to make his own decisions and plan his own life.

Neither is purely economic power an evil. A man starts a business and hires employees; they are free to take the position or remain as they were before. The employer has no power to force someone to take the job or arrest him if he refuses. Even in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, no one was forced to take jobs in the new factories; bad as conditions then were by present stan dards, many eagerly did so, because the income they were offered far exceeded what they received on the farms from which they came.[1] “Economic power is the capacity to influence other people’s behavior by offering them something the acquisition of which they consider more desirable than the avoidance of the sacrifice they have to make for it. It means the invitation to enter into a bargain, an act of exchange. I will give you a if you give me b. There is no question of any compulsion nor of any threats. The buyer does not ‘rule’ the seller and the seller does not ‘rule’ the buyer.”[2]

Political power, by contrast, is power backed by the institutional force of government—of police, armies, courts, and prisons. A government possesses the legal monopoly of physical force over a defined geographical area, and government operates always by force or threat of force against those who would disobey. If you are “kindly requested” to pay your income tax, and write back that you have thought it over and decided not to, you are instantly subject to apprehension, arrest, trial, and punishment. Not all political power is evil—for example, laws protecting life and property and punishing murder and theft—but still there is no doubt that this is power in its most naked form, the power of the gun to suppress and punish those who would disobey.

The authors of most utopias, however, go much further than to suggest the use of force to protect life and property; they use the force of law to shape other people’s lives in the direction that they dictate, usually involving the most minute details of life.

Some Historical Utopias

The first utopia described in Western philosophical literature is the Republic of Plato. Though benevolent compared with many utopias to follow, it already possessed the main feature of so many of them, of other people being merely pawns on the author’s chessboard, for him to move about as he pleased. The aim of Plato’s utopia was, as in so many others, a worthy one: to ensure justice in the nation by ensuring that the rulers themselves were just. The requirements for becoming such worthy rulers, however, were severe: all children were to be taken from their parents at an early age, lest the parents fail to recognize unusual talent in their children or do something to squelch that talent when it became evident; those who through manifest talent became candidates for rulership were to be denied contact with large areas of experience, such as acquaintance with persons of questionable character, poems which attributed evil to the gods, and even music of all but the most ascetic kind. The rulers themselves were to possess wives and children in common, and no man was to know which child was his own. Once the gifted few were in a position of power, their rule over the people was absolute: no elections, no representation, no referendum, no appeal.

Plato’s utopia was never put into practice as he propounded it. Many others, however, were put into practice without having been described in writing in advance. For many centuries the Incas of Peru had a rigorously stratified social structure with a highly repressive government. All land belonged to the State. Peasants were not allowed to leave their farms or villages without government permission. Family life was totally controlled by the State, including whether and whom one could marry. Criticism of the State was punishable by death or torture: the victim was hanged by his feet or thrown into a pit of poisonous snakes. People suspected of subversive activities were confined in underground caves containing jaguars, snakes, and scorpions. The individual’s life was planned not by him but for him by the ruling council of the Incas. But when everything is planned, one cannot develop the initiative required to cope with the unexpected. One unexpected event was the Spanish invasion. Fewer than two hundred of them conquered the entire vast Inca empire.

Under the ancient Chinese emperors (13th to 3rd century B.C.) everyone was forced to work full-time at ten years of age; at twenty he received a field to plow, and at sixty he returned it to the State and lived in dependency on the State. No private ownership of land was permitted. Large families were split up and grown sons were forbidden to live with their parents. Capital punishment was imposed for countless offenses such as minor thefts. The State had a monopoly on water, controlling the supply (sluices, dikes, irrigation canals), and the vital water could be cut off at any time. There was a wide network of State informers to spy on people and report their activities, with one family member often spying on another. Those suspected of crimes were often made into slaves, and conviction was followed by punishments such as decapitation, quartering, strangulation, being buried alive, or being boiled in a cauldron. The ancient Chinese emperor Ch’in Shih Huang was so admired by the modern Chinese dictator Mao Tse Tung that Mao tried to outdo him: “He buried only 460 Confucians alive,” Mao proclaimed. “But he has a long way to go to catch up with us. We have already buried 46,000 alive.”[3]

Yes, utopias are a bad idea. I have always thought this, but the author of the above piece articulates my own feelings very well. The fundamental problem is not holding this or that ideal, but rather the act of trying to impose that on other people. If something is a good idea, you should explain it to people, and incentivise them in a voluntary, peaceful, and positive way. This is what I try to do through my work at the Free State Project, and my asset protection business.

Labels: economics, politics, socialism