This article was published in the Spring 1996 issue of Formulations
by the Free Nation Foundation
 
Dismantling Leviathan From Within
Part IV: The Sons of Brutus
 
by Roderick T. Long
 

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Outline

Part I: Can We? Should We?
--introductory quotes
--What If?
--Who Are They?
--How Did They Get There?
--May They Legitimately Stay There?
--The Principled Objection to Political Action
--Political Action as Self-Defense; or, Peril in Smallville
--Three Cheers for Casuistry
--The Principled Objection, Improved

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Part II: The Process of Reform
--The Problem of Libertarian Reform
--Services:  Abolish or Phase Out?
--Regulation:  Abolish or Phase Out?
--Taxation:  Abolish or Phase Out?

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Part III:  Is Libertarian Political Action Self-Defeating?
--The Pragmatic Objection to Political Action
--First Pragmatic Pitfall:  Top-Down Reform
--Second Pragmatic Pitfall:  Dancing with the Devil
--Third Pragmatic Pitfall:  Loss of Credibility

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Part IV:  The Sons of Brutus
--introduction
--Fourth Pragmatic Pitfall:  Reactionary Backlash
--Welcome to East Zimiamvia
--Notes
 
 
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I began this series by asking you to imagine that libertarians had come to power in the tiny country of East Zimiamvia, and were preparing to dismantle the apparatus of state power and create a free society. What practical barriers would they face? What moral barriers would they face?

In the first installment ("Can We? Should We?," Formulations Vol. II, No. 4), I considered what I called the Principled Objection, according to which, since political power is inherently a form of aggression, it is immoral for libertarians to exercise political power, even with the intention of decreasing or abolishing that power. In response, I argued that seizing political power could be justified as a form of self-defense.

In the second installment ("The Process of Reform," Formulations Vol. III, No. 1) I considered a more subtle version of the Principled Objection. According to this version, no program of dismantling the state from within can be both moral and effective, since morality requires that government activities be terminated immediately, whereas pragmatic considerations suggest that the liberalization process must be gradual if it is to be effective. In response, I argued that those aspects of government whose immediate cessation is ethically mandatory are distinct from the aspects which must for practical reasons be phased out over time, so that an effective state-dismantling program can take an abolitionist attitude toward the former and a gradualist attitude toward the latter, consistent with both libertarian moral scruples and pragmatic requirements.

In the third installment ("Is Libertarian Political Action Self-Defeating?," Formulations, Vol. III, No. 2), I turned from the Principled Objection to the Pragmatic Objection, the argument that dismantling state power from within, even if morally permissible, is simply not practically feasible. I considered three "pragmatic pitfalls": first, that reliance on political rather than educational solutions flies in the face of the libertarian recognition that the bottom-up approaches are more effective than top-down ones; second, that trying to put libertarians in power ignores the fact that power tends to corrupt its holders, even if those holders are libertarian; and third, that by engaging in political action libertarians would be perceived as hypocritical and so would undermine their own effectiveness. I argued that each of these objections was mistaken. In this final installment, I shall deal with a fourth difficulty for libertarian state-dismantlers.

 
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Fourth Pragmatic Pitfall: Reactionary Backlash

The fourth pitfall is the threat that those who stand (or believe they stand) to lose from the establishment of a libertarian régime will be able to mount a successful policy of obstructionism unless there exists sufficient bottom-up grass-roots support for libertarian ideas to hold the reactionaries in check.

This objection is correct as far as it goes, I think, but it is more effective against a purely top-down approach than against a mixed approach. Still, it's worth considering who the enemies of the new régime are likely to be, and what power they can be expected to wield.

One important threat to consider, if the new free nation (say, East Zimiamvia) has been ceded its territory by a parent nation (say, Greater Zimiamvia), is that parent nation itself. Once the cession has been made, what incentive does the Greater Zimiamvian government have to abide by it? In How to Start Your Own Country, a study of the new-country movement, Erwin Strauss presented the problem as follows:

"One approach ... is buying the territory in question from the nation that currently has it. This is a sound approach, and one I would recommend wherever the incumbent nation can be induced to enter into such a bargain. But this is basically a secondary matter, meaningless until the military situation has been provided for. If the new country lacks the willingness or ability to defend the purchased territory by force of arms, the selling country will have a strong incentive to repudiate the sale as soon as the purchaser's check clears. Or perhaps the seller would wait until after the next coup d'etat or election or revolution (or however governments are changed in the selling country) to act. If it waited too long, neighboring countries might decide that the seller truly had no further interest in the territory, and move in themselves. In any case, without being backed up by force of arms, any bill of sale or title deed held by the new country would be a worthless scrap of paper.

Furthermore ... there are reasons for existing countries to be reluctant to sell sovereignty over pieces of their territories. ... there is only so much land a nation has to which to sell sovereignty (even if it is willing to weather the emotional reaction among the population to selling off part of the sacred soil of the Motherland); and once it's sold, there is no further income to be had ....

There is also the great-power factor. In past centuries, there were corners of the world that the great powers were not interested in and/or were unable to influence. ... Nowadays, the interests of the great powers extend worldwide and even into space. They have networks of grants-in-aid, favorable trade terms, military assistance programs, etc., to make it worth any small country's while to accomodate [sic] one or more of them. These great powers tend to want to see the status quo maintained. Especially, they want to see the number of countries held down, because the fewer the players there are in the international game, the easier it is for the great powers to manage things to their own advantage. A country selling sovereignty would face being cut off from the aid, trade, etc., that the great powers can offer. Thus they are only interested in doing such things if there's a large, ongoing profit to be realized .... The small countries really aren't interested in taking the grief that would be involved in selling sovereignty just for a few, one-shot payments from buyers ...."

(Erwin S. Strauss, How to Start Your Own Country, Second Edition (Loompanics, Port Townsend WA, 1984), pp. 11-13.)

To this problem there is, as I see it, a three-pronged solution. First, the Libertarian Republic of East Zimiamvia must have a credible national defense in place as quickly as possible. (For suggestions about the organization and character of such defense, see my "Defending a Free Nation," in Formulations, Vol. II, No. 2 (Winter 1994-95).)

Second, the negotiations for territory in which to create a "libertarian homeland" should be constructed with as much publicity and P. R. as possible, in order to win sympathy and support in the forum of world opinion and thus discourage other nations from hindering us.

Third, we need to make it worth Greater Zimiamvia's while both to cede sovereignty in the first place and then to continue to respect that cession later on. This is where a 99-year lease of sovereignty, with continuing payments on the installment plan, might prove more feasible than a permanent cession of sovereignty for a one-time fee. The prospect of a continuing source of revenue — assuming we can make this credible to the Greater Zimiamvian politicians — might tempt them into agreeing to cede sovereignty. (We had better sweeten the deal, and lessen the financial risk for Greater Zimiamvia, by making the down payment fairly substantial.) The temporary character of the cession should make it easier for the Greater Zimiamvian government to sell the deal to its own citizens. And Greater Zimiamvia will have less incentive to repudiate the deal afterward if the lease proves a continuing source of revenue.

But how will the libertarian government (or at any rate, the organization that calls itself a government) in East Zimiamvia be able to afford these periodic payments? Well, payoffs to the Greater Zimiamvian government will form a crucial part of East Zimiamvia's national defense; and I have discussed elsewhere ("Funding Public Goods: Six Solutions," Formulations, Vol. II, No. 1 (Autumn 1994)) how sufficient revenues for national defense can be raised by voluntary means.

Two obvious objections to this scheme are these:

First, these periodic payments to Greater Zimiamvia are in effect a form of tribute, or "protection money"; and, as the saying goes, those who once pay Danegeld are never free of the Dane. Can a free nation really count as free if its freedom is mortgaged to a hostile government? What is sovereignty worth, with this threat hanging forever overhead? What has become of the patriotic cry: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!"

Second, a 99-year lease is all very well for the living, but do we not want to secure the blessings of liberty not only to ourselves but to our posterity? When the lease expires in 99 years and sovereignty reverts to Greater Zimiamvia, will the East Zimiamvians of tomorrow be in the same helpless position as the residents of Hong Kong today, forcibly repatriated from freedom into bondage?

To both these objections I answer simply that if even half of what we libertarians believe about the capacities of a free society for production, innovation, and growth is true, then within a few decades of its inception a libertarian nation should be in a much better position — economically, diplomatically, and militarily — to renegotiate its contract and win more favorable terms.

But what of domestic threats to the fledgling libertarian régime? Machiavelli offers the following warning:

"... the government of a state which has become free evokes factions which are hostile, not factions which are friendly. To such hostile factions will belong all those who held preferment under the tyrannical government and grew fat on the riches of its prince, since, now that they are deprived of these emoluments, they cannot live contented, but are compelled, each of them, to try to restore the tyranny in order to regain their authority. Nor, as I have said, will such a government acquire supporters who are friendly, because a self-governing state assigns honours and rewards only for honest and determinate reasons ....

If then one desires to remedy these difficulties and to cure the disorders which the aforesaid difficulties bring about, there is no way more efficient, more sure, more safe or more necessary, than to kill the sons of Brutus, who, as history shows would not together with other Roman youths have been induced to conspire against their country if it had not been that, under consuls, they could not attain to an outstanding position, as they could under the kings; so that the freedom of the people was, from their point of view, but servitude.

He then who sets out to govern ... in a free state ... and does not secure himself against those who are hostile to the new order, is setting up a form of government which will be but short-lived."

(Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, I. 16 (pp. 153-155).)
 

"It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating changes in a state's constitution. The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new. Their support is lukewarm partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the existing laws on their side, and partly because men are generally incredulous, never really trusting new things unless they have tested them by experience. In consequence, whenever those who oppose the changes can do so, they attack vigorously, and the defence made by the others is only lukewarm. So both the innovator and his friends come to grief."

(Machiavelli, The Prince, VI; trans. George Bull (Penguin, London, 1985), p. 51.)

In the case of the newborn free nation in East Zimiamvia, who are "those who prospered under the old order"? There are several such: first, the politicians and bureaucrats of the previous régime; second, the private beneficiaries of government protection, privilege, and largess; and third, the forces of organized crime. "Those who would prosper under the new," by contrast, are the common people in general.

The army — if one comes with the territory, which of course it may not — represents a special case. In most countries of the world, the army plays an active and public political role, a situation relatively unfamiliar to Americans. Is the army under civilian control, or is it fairly independent? Is it unified in its outlook, or divided into factions? Do its members come from and identify with the common people (in which case they may fall under Machiavelli's second category), or do they constitute a privileged élite (in which case they probably fall under the first)? Will the army be weakened or strengthened by new plans for a libertarian defense force? Can its members be counted on to fight against Greater Zimiamvians if necessary? The army can play either a constructive or an obstructive role; sufficient opposition from the armed forces will make any plans to establish a libertarian society doomed from the start.

Machiavelli advises wiping out the old guard as quickly as possible — "killing the sons of Brutus"1 — and goes on to praise Clearchus, the reformer of Heraclea, who, faced with "an arrogant upper class which he could in no way satisfy or correct," chose a "suitable opportunity" and proceeded to "cut to pieces all the nobles to the immense satisfaction of the popular party." But even if this option were feasible, it would be unlikely to appeal to libertarian scruples.

Instead of killing the vested interests off, another possibility is to buy them off; but with what? A libertarian government can hardly offer them much in the way of political power or privilege, and is presumably going to be strapped for cash. Perhaps one could try to placate them with British-style titles of nobility conferring no actual power — but exactly how dumb are these folks?

Those in Machiavelli's other category, the common people who stand to prosper under the new régime, also pose a problem, since it may be far from obvious to them that the new order will benefit them. It seems advisable to reassure them, and at the same time promote economic productivity, by getting sound currency into their hands — as much as possible, as fast as possible — through privatization vouchers, massive "tax refunds," or what have you. In F. Paul Wilson's libertarian science-fiction novel An Enemy of the State, a key element in the free nation movement's strategy is to build up a hoard of gold over the years, for rapid distribution to the populace of the prospective free nation when the hour of transition arrives. But this approach is not exactly cheap.

Another potential problem, especially acute in proportion as the transition process is top-down rather than bottom-up, is that a long-governed population that has built up habits of dependence may panic or flounder at the prospect of genuine responsibility and self-reliance:

"How difficult it is for a people accustomed to live under a prince to preserve their liberty, should they by some accident acquire it as Rome did after the expulsion of the Tarquins, is shown by numerous examples which may be studied in the historical records of ancient times. That there should be such a difficulty is reasonable; for such a people differs in no wise from a wild animal which, though by nature fierce and accustomed to the woods, has been brought up in captivity and servitude and is then loosed to rove the countryside at will, where, being unaccustomed to seeking its own food and discovering no place in which it can find refuge, it becomes the prey of the first comer who seeks to chain it up again. ... It should be assumed, then, as a basic and established principle that to a state which has been under a prince and has become corrupt, freedom cannot be restored even if the prince and the whole of his stock be wiped out. On the contrary, what will happen is that one prince will wipe out another .... It is on account of all this that it is difficult, or rather impossible, either to maintain a republican form of government in states which have become corrupt or to create such a form afresh."

(Discourses on Livy, I. 16-18 (pp. 153-164).)

Yet Machiavelli is not always so pessimistic. In nearly the same breath, he is uncharacteristically sanguine about the prospects for liberal reform: "[A political reformer] will find that a small section of the populace desire ... authority over others, but that the vast bulk ... desire but to live in security. For in all states whatever be their form of government, the real rulers do not amount to more than forty or fifty citizens and, since this is a small number, it is an easy thing to make yourself secure in their regard either by doing away with them or by granting them such a share of honours, according to their standing, as will for the most part satisfy them. As for the rest, who demand but to live in security, they can easily be satisfied by introducing such institutions and laws as shall ... make for the security of the public as a whole. When a prince does this, and the people see that on no occasion does he break such laws, in a short time they will begin to live in security and contentment."

(Discourses on Livy, I. 16 (p. 156).)
 

Here, though, Machiavelli fails to consider two facts. First, citizens who have been taught from birth that they have the right to impose their will on their neighbors through the vote have had inculcated into them a good many more political desires than merely the desire to be left alone, and they may well be reluctant to surrender this power over others.

Machiavelli may be forgiven this oversight, since he is not considering democratic régimes. But a second oversight is less excusable, since it applies to every form of government: Machiavelli is ignoring the fact that governments customarily operate by a system of patronage designed to convince their subject populations that they have a stake in the existing despotic régime. In this respect Machiavelli seems surprisingly un-Machiavellian;2 for a greater insight into the realities of power politics, we must turn to the analysis offered by Étienne de la Boétie, born three years after Machiavelli's death:

"It is not the troops on horseback, it is not the companies afoot, it is not arms that defend the tyrant. This does not seem credible on first thought, but it is nevertheless true that there are only four or five who maintain the dictator, four or five who keep the country in bondage to him. Five or six have always had access to his ear, and have either gone to him of their own accord, or else have been summoned by him, to be accomplices in his cruelties, companions in his pleasures, panders to his lusts, and sharers in his plunders. ... The six have six hundred who profit under them .... The six hundred maintain under them six thousand, whom they promote in rank, upon whom they confer the government of provinces or the direction of finances .... And whoever is pleased to unwind the skein will observe that not the six thousand but a hundred thousand, and even millions, cling to the tyrant by this cord to which they are tied."

(Étienne de la Boétie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, trans. Harry Kurz (Free Life Editions, New York, 1975, pp. 77-78.)
 

Through this sort of patronage device, the entire populace is conned into believing that they benefit from the existing power structure, and this may lead them to resist any attempt to dismantle Leviathan. Of course, what La Boétie is describing is actually a typical pyramid scheme, in which only the top few levels are net winners; the vast bulk of the participants are net losers, and if they could be convinced of that, their allegiance to the old order might dissipate rather quickly.

Once again the Czech privatization model (described in Part II, "The Process of Reform") offers reasons for optimism. Emerging from decades of communist rule, the Czechs were faced with the very problems we've been discussing: on the one hand, an entrenched old guard, committed to statism, and reluctant to yield their power; on the other hand, an impoverished populace, eager for change — but habituated to dependence, and distrustful of any reform policies that might plunge the all-too-fragile economy into a period of dislocation and austerity it could ill afford.

The Czech reformers' solution was the famous privatization voucher scheme, and the spontaneous IPF system it inspired. (See Part II.) Privatization, as we've seen, brought swift improvements in living standards, while the IPFs (investment privatization funds) got cash quickly into everyone's hands; all this served to reassure the common people and win their allegiance to the new régime. But not only did the Czech approach win the masses over — but it also managed, incredibly, to defuse the opposition of the old guard:

"Most phenomenal ... is the electoral payoff of what the government still resists calling the "Czech Miracle." While reformers all across the formerly communist nation-states are in hurried retreat, as former apparatchiks turned populists steam back into power, the classical-liberal government headed by Prime Minister Klaus enjoys no serious political challenge from left or right. Prague is in full bloom and the Czechs are far too busy tending garden to launch the dirigiste backlash which swirls violently just beyond....

[T]he Czech liberals believed that the only way to keep the reform flame on high was to overwhelm the public with so much opportunity that Czechs would not have time to quarrel over details. Dumping massive amounts of state property into private hands would not only achieve efficiency — production goes up as socialism goes down — but create a feeding frenzy on the corpse of the socialist state. This frantic cleansing process channeled society's political energy in a most productive way. Instead of decades-long maneuvers to position this or that interest group for the next well-considered round of privatization, the most calculating men and women snatched their opportunities to become vested in the property now (briefly) available. ... The gold rush was on, and Czechoslovakians were given one brief shining moment to either become capitalists or to sit on the sidelines of history. Entrepreneurs overwhelmed the political fixers, and the Czech Miracle was born. ...

The instant the process began in earnest, thousands of prospective entrepreneurs ... began to push hard for privatization. Since state managers were intimately involved in this competitive process, it removed them from the ranks of another competitive process: obstruction. In every post-communist country, these apparatchiks form the core of opposition to reform: Why help privatize what you (as a state manager) can pilfer? The Czech answer: If you don't help us privatize, someone else will. ...

Workers or others knowledgeable about a business were typically high bidders, and entrepreneurial talents were immediately unleashed. Managers who had adroitly pilfered state assets were turned into profit-minded capitalists in the stroke of a winning bid. Resources became efficiently utilized, and consumers gained a new importance. ... "

(Thomas W. Hazlett, "The Czech Miracle: Why Privatization Went Right in the Czech Republic," Reason, April 1995, pp. 29-33.)
 

The experience of the Czech Republic thus offers a promising way of avoiding the fourth pragmatic pitfall.

The Czech model may also provide a solution to the troubling problem of land reform. In most nations, a substantial proportion of private land has been redistributed either directly to the government or indirectly to the government's cronies. In trying to solve this problem, libertarians are pulled two ways. On the one hand, libertarian justice demands that stolen property be returned to its rightful owners. On the other hand, endless litigation over property titles going back decades or even centuries can condemn the current occupants (who may themselves be relatively innocent) to perpetual uncertainty about their rights to the land — and often there may be no one obvious candidate for the rightful claimant. (Fred's land was seized by the bank over a default on a debt Fred disputes; the land in question was originally sold to Fred by Anna, who now claims she was swindled out of it, and Anna in turn received the land as a grant from the government, which expropriated it earlier from Michael, whose ancestors stole it from the Apache Indians, who in turn stole it from the Navajo.) In situations like this, where the absolute right may be impossible to determine, the Czech Republic's approach may be the nearest right:

"While establishing the most far-reaching restitution program in the Eastern bloc, the law set lightning-fast deadlines — those who wanted to file claims to "reprivatize" property expropriated by the communists after 1948 had less than a year .... The government did not want properties in limbo for years of wrangling over historic ownership rights."

("The Czech Miracle," p. 30.) 

The "most far-reaching restitution program" aspect of the Czech approach satisfies libertarian scruples about restitution, while the deadlines ensure the economic certainty to which current holders are entitled.

 
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Welcome to East Zimiamvia!

Over the course of this four-part series I have argued that the top-down project of dismantling Leviathan from within, while both morally risky and practically difficult, is nevertheless permissible and possible. It must, however, be accompanied by a robust bottom-up approach as well. I would simply add, in closing, that if ever Leviathan is successfully dismantled, the bottom-up libertarian movement will still be needed as much as ever — to make sure the people retain the freedom they have won. D

 
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Notes

1 The reference is not to Marcus Junius Brutus, the famous assassin of Cæsar, but to the much earlier Lucius Junius Brutus, who led the overthrow of the tyrannical rule of the Tarquin monarchs, and established the Roman Republic. When his own sons plotted to betray the fledgling Republic and restore the old order, Brutus sat in judgment on them and sentenced them to death.

2 Throughout his writings Machiavelli is strangely blind to the phenomenon of patronage. For example, when Machiavelli tries to explain why the plebeian class of ancient Rome, having finally after many long struggles won the right to elect members of their own class to the consulship (the chief executive power of the Roman Republic, shared between two men), nevertheless continued to pass over plebeian candidates in order to elect patricians to the office of consul, he writes:

"... men make quite a number of mistakes about things in general, but not so many about particulars. In general the Roman plebs thought that they deserved the consulate .... But when it came to deciding which particular members of their party to elect, they recognized their weakness and judged that no one of them was worthy of that of which all of them, taken together, had seemed to be worthy; so that being ashamed of their own people, they had recourse to those who were worthy of the office [i.e., patricians]. It is no wonder Titus Livy is astonished at this decision, and remarks: 'Where today will you find in anyone that modesty, fairness and highmindedness which the whole people then displayed?'"

(Discourses on Livy, I. 47 (pp. 225-226).)
 

Here we find Machiavelli displaying the kind of romantic sentimentality and political naïveté we would expect from any other thinker rather than him. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the plebeians supported patrician candidates, not because they recognized their own inferiority, but because the patricians paid them off:  "The city-states of the ancient world — [including] Rome during the early Republican period — had surprisingly weak and decentralized governments, with nothing we would recognize as a police force. ... Yet these city-states were class societies, with a powerful and effective ruling class. Where did the power of the ruling class come from, if not from a powerful state?

The historian M. I. Finley has studied this question, and come to the conclusion that the ruling classes maintained their power through the device of patronage .... In effect, the wealthy classes kept control by buying off the poor. Each wealthy family had a large following of commoners who served their patrons' interests (e.g., supporting aristocratic policies in the public assembly) in exchange for the family's largess. ...

Even the patricians' losses were seldom serious. For example, the plebeians eventually won ... the right to elect plebeians to the consulship — but thanks to an effective patronage system, the plebeians almost always elected patricians to the office anyway."

("Can We Escape the Ruling Class?," Formulations, Vol. II, No. 1 (Autumn 1994).)

 

Roderick T. Long is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He holds an A.B. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Cornell. A frequent lecturer on libertarian topics, he is the author of a book manuscript tentatively titled Aristotle on Fate and Freedom.  
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