(2004-08-31) Rockwell Libertarian Anarchism

Roderick T Long defends Libertarian Anarchism (Anarcho Capitalist) against 10 objections. Well, there's a popular nineteenth-century theory of the origin of the Nation-State that you find in a number of different forms. It's in Herbert Spencer, it's in Oppenheimer, and you find it in some of the French liberals like Comte and Dunoyer, and Molinari - who wasn't really French, he was Belgian ("I am not a Frenchie, I'm a Belgie!"). This theory - they had different versions of it, but it's all pretty similar - was that what happens is that one group conquers another group. Often the theory was that a sort of hunter-marauder (Hunter Gatherer) group conquers an agricultural group (Agriculture)... I think another origin you can see of some states or state-like things is in the same sort of situation but in cases where they succeed in fending off the invaders. Some local group within the invaded group says: we're going to specialize in defense - we're going to specialize in defending the rest of you guys against these invaders. And they succeed. If you look at the history of England, I think this is what happens with the English monarchy.

Includes a reference to a story by Murray Rothbard, which focuses on the origin of the State, but also argues against the Route Around optimism. The old Resistance men abandoned their old negative preaching, and got down to the hard, practical task of raising voluntary gifts for Hector's pet projects - to show Hector and all the rest the superiority of the Voluntary Way. And what was the reaction of Hector and Iago and the rest? They sat at their periodic board meeting of the Gang, reviewing the new stance of the Leader and the Resistance, and they did only one thing: they laughed, and they laughed, and they laughed. And finally Iago recovered a bit, and he said: "So, the sheep themselves have supplied us with their own Judas goat!", and they roared again with laughter.