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Voluntaryism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the political philosophy originated by Auberon Herbert. For other uses, see voluntarism.
Voluntaryism is the philosophical belief that the only legitimate interactions between and among people are those done on a freely chosen basis through voluntary association and agreements. No specific form of association which a person chooses to engage in is objectively less desirable than any other according to voluntaryism. Any coercion from third party or otherwise that may be associated with relationships between people is to be abandoned so that individuality in society may flourish.
Proponents argue that because by nature government "provid[es] services and products by the barrel of a gun",[1] associations under conditions of statism are often coerced through the means of fraud, threat, theft, abduction, assault, enslavement and murder. Voluntaryists believe today's states directly contradict the voluntaryist position, and advocate, at a minimum, removing all coercive power from the state apparatus.
Voluntaryists advocate non-violent strategies to attain a free society, including education, persuasion, and mechanisms on the free market—what agorists would call counter-economics. They hold that it would be impossible to use coercion in order to bring freedom to a society because all coercion and tyranny are predicated in imposing upon people ideals or goals in defiance of their free will. In other words, if one would not choose something on his or her own, how does forcing him or her to choose it make him or her more free? Thus voluntaryists, like other libertarians, advocate the non-aggression principle.
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Voluntaryism as a political philosophy was first advocated by Auberon Herbert, a disciple of Herbert Spencer who "stayed truer to Spencer's original anarchist vision and was a direct inspiration to a squad of 1950s American libertarian anarchists who adopted his term 'voluntaryism.'"[2]
Before maturing into voluntaryism, Herbert had served as a Liberal in the House of Commons for Nottingham between 1870 and 1874.[2] It was here that he became a hardcore Spencerian, "to the point that he began to doubt the propriety of staying in government.[2] In 1879, he decided that his "political values did require representation in Parliament," but failed because the Liberal party "found his newfound radicalism uncongenial."[2]
Herbert sought in 1885 to establish the first explicitly voluntaryist political party called the Party of Individual Liberty.[2][3] That same year, he published a book titled The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State: A Statement of the Moral Principles of the Party of Individual Liberty, and the Political Measures Founded Upon Them, which received a review in Benjamin R. Tucker's individualist anarchist journal Liberty.[4] The aim of his party was to secure “the liberty of each, limited alone by the like liberty of all.”[5] Writes Herbert,
Each man and woman are to be free to direct their faculties and their energies, according to their own sense of what is right and wise, in every direction, except one. They are not to use their faculties for the purpose of forcibly restraining their neighbor from the same free use of his faculties. We claim for A and B perfect freedom as regards themselves, but on the one condition that they respect the same freedom as regards C. If A and B are stronger either in virtue of greater physical strength or greater numbers than their neighbor C, they must neither use their superior strength after the simply brutal fashion of those who live by violence, to tie C's hands and take from him what he possesses, or after the less brutal but equally unjust fashion, to pass laws to direct C as to the manner in which he shall use his faculties and live his life."[5]
Herbert also started the first explicitly voluntaryist journal, Free Life, "the organ of voluntary taxation and the voluntary state."[2]
According to Brian Doherty, Herbert "saw his anarchistic libertarianism as the final apotheosis of everything good in the human moral sense, a world in which force and violence can be used for nothing other than protecting 'self-ownership'—the root of all human rights."[2]
Thus, Herbert established various principles of voluntaryism and Free Life, including:
- The Self-Owner Is Owner of His Own Mind and Body and His Own Property
- No Peaceful Nonaggressive Citizen Can Be Submitted to the Control of Others, Apart from His Own Consent
- The Moral Rights of a Delegated Body, Such as a Goverment, Can Never Be Greater than the Moral Rights of the Individuals Who Delegated to It Its Power. Force Can Only Be Used (Whether by an Individual or by a Government Makes No Difference) for Defensive Purposes—Never for Aggressive Purposes
- Voluntaryists Believe in Government, Strictly Limited as Regards Its Authority; and See in It, So Limited, a True Organ of Society[6]
In the 1950s, anarchist-leaning libertarians, looking for a term to describe themselves, began toying with the term "voluntaryist" and in some cases even "100 percent Voluntaryist."[7] Even Murray N. Rothbard flirted with the term.[8] According to Doherty, "[n]one of the libertarian anarchists back then fully embraced the term" anarchism for fear of being associated with violence.[9]
In modern times, the site voluntaryism.com has become the vanguard of the voluntaryist movement. As such, the term "voluntaryism" is often used today as a synonym for market anarchist or anarcho-capitalist beliefs. Like former voluntaryists, today's take their base libertarian values (i.e. the concept of self-ownership and the non-aggression principle) to their logical conclusion, being that human interactions should be voluntary and free from the initiation of force against person and/or property.
Despite, however, it's common association with market anarchism, the argument has been made that there is nothing inherently capitalistic about voluntaryism. Left-libertarian Alexander S. Peak has gone so far as to argue in one essay that anarcho-communist communes and associations would likely exist within a framework of anarcho-capitalism, and that anarchists of both the communist and capitalist persuasions can, so long as they adhere to voluntaryist principles, make strong allies "in the struggle against statism."[10]
Many modern voluntaryists reject even the notion of voting, as, they contend, the electoral system is one in which the majority imposes involuntary leadership over the minority. To participate in elections, therefore, is to participate in coersion.[11]
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Whereas individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker viewed Auberon Herbert's views as being consistent with anarchism, Herbert did not see himself as an anarchist, arguing that "anarchy doesn't understand itself" and that anarchy fails to achieve "no government" because the crime of some against others, even in the absence of a centralised state, constitutes government.[6] Despite this, voluntaryism is usually accepted as a valid theory of anarchism, and many contemporary voluntaryists consider themselves anarchists.[not specific enough to verify]
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- ^ World's Shortest Political Quiz by Marc Stevens on YouTube accessed at December 14, 2007
- ^ a b c d e f g Doherty, Brian (2007), Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, United States of America: PublicAffairsTM, pp. 36, ISBN 978-1-58648-350-0
- ^ "Herbert & State Compulsion", cited December 16, 2007.
- ^ Tucker, Benjamin R. "Auberon Herbert and his Work." Liberty, Vol. 3, No. 10, Saturday, May 23 1885, Whole No. 62
- ^ a b Herbert, Auberon (1885), The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State: A Statement of the Moral Principles of the Party of Individual Liberty, and the Political Measures Founded Upon Them (.pdf), London, England: Williams and Norgate, pp. 4
- ^ a b Herbert, Auberon. "The Principles of Voluntaryism and Free Life," cited December 16, 2007
- ^ Doherty, Brian (2007), Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, United States of America: PublicAffairsTM, pp. 177, ISBN 978-1-58648-350-0
- ^ Doherty, Brian (2007), Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, United States of America: PublicAffairsTM, pp. 244, ISBN 978-1-58648-350-0
- ^ Doherty, Brian (2007), Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, United States of America: PublicAffairsTM, pp. 249, ISBN 978-1-58648-350-0
- ^ Peak, Alexander S. "Rothbard, Anarcho-Communism, and the Individual." November 20, 2007. Cited December 16, 2007.
- ^ Non-Voting, voluntaryism.com, cited December 16, 2007