Does the State, any State, have the right to exist? Many have answered that it does not have any right to exist and is mankind’s main enemy. We remember Murray N. Rothbard and Lysaner Spooner saw that the reason the State has no right to exist is very simple. There is a basic moral law that is inborn in us; that we learn as small children; that good parents reinforce in us: we should never harm other people who have done us no wrong. Since the state has to harm innocent people to exist then it should not exist. Often anarchists and libertarians refer to this law as the non-aggression principle. One may not morally aggress against an innocent man or his property.
The State claims the right to change moral law and it claims the exclusive right to enforce moral law by violence, fraud, and threat of violence. The State claims that morality is whatever the State decides morality is. So naturally the State attempts to change moral law by legislation and insist that only its legislation (and bureaucratic rules) can define, outlaw, and punish the “illegal” actions of the population. The subjects of the State may do only what the State allows them to do or else they are immoral and illegal. The State seeks to be master of all reality. The results of the State’s claims lead us to the police state, to war, to tyranny, and to slavery.
Murray Rothbard pointed out that “Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State’s inhabitants, or subjects.” The State steals money from its subjects, its slaves, and then does with that money as it pleases. Regardless of what it does with that stolen money, we can not escape the fact that it was stolen in the first place. No good comes from an evil beginning. The State is like the mobster that breaks your legs, and takes all your money, but gives you a pair of crutches.
There are many arguments against the State and there have been many anti-state intellectuals who have argued against the State with great logic and rigor. But one of the simplest of arguments is that in the last century the various governments were responsible for the murder of nearly 200 million of their own slave-subjects before we even consider the horrors unleashed in warfare against other governments. If you thought government was there to protect you — surprise!
Humanity seems to assume that the State is inevitable. Humanity assumes that only because they are used to it and the State uses all manner of its minions to convince its subjects of its necessity. We grow up in a sea of propaganda in favor of the State, especially in government schools. Imagine that! Government schools claim that the government is necessary, good, and our friend. The slave-subjects of the State grow resigned to the inevitability of the State even if they realize it is evil. That is enough for the small group of gangsters running the State to stay in power.
Anarchists argue that all the functions of the State could be distributed among organizations in the free market. Not the market the US Empire has now! I am talking about a laissez-faire free-market with no government to corrupt or control it.
The main political battle of our times is not who to elect to high office next, but rather, to convince the common man that the State is not inevitable.
On the Mark 