Introduction and Caveat
As I have argued in previous articles in Formulations2 we must place our conceptions of a free society within the framework of history. I believe that we now live at the end of the Statist Era, a period of human history which began several thousand years ago. The next era, a stateless one, is now forming. To me it is not a question of "if" it will come, but merely a question of "how soon." Our specific efforts, here, to describe it—our formulations—will not cause the new era, but they can help it come sooner. And our ideas can help decide many of its characteristics ("statelessness" is a fairly vague description, after all).
The speed with which our descriptions might be adopted will be enhanced if we can place the changes we seek in a historical context. The change to a new era will not simply involve another twist on the theme of civilization. What is coming involves a paradigm shift greater than anything witnessed by any civilization yet devised by man. And to appreciate this we must look back to a time long before the first civilization, to trace the fundamental forces which set the stage for the emergence of The State.
Let me say clearly in advance that my interpretation of history, of Natural History, involves a degree of speculation. Certainly many esteemed social scientists, social philosophers and biologists will disagree with all or with part of what I say here. And I will not claim that my ideas are unique—though I don’t think they have yet been put in the service of libertarianism.
The state, as a social institution, is associated only with complex societies. The communities which humans formed for most of our species’ existence were quite simple by comparison. The various institutions which make up modern societies did not pop into existence, just as they are, all at the same time. They took thousands of years to develop, first appearing in simpler forms, in different places at different times (although all began fairly recently in geologic terms). The most profound difference between the earliest humans and modern people is in the way they obtain food. The rest of our complex institutions have developed out of the changes in the way we get our food. The state is no exception. Now new technologies are altering not only the way we get food but also most of the rest of our culture. The ecological relationships which set the stage for the state and which have sustained the state until modern times will not survive the social changes caused by these new technologies.
Pre-Human Roots
For something like two million years, humans were hunter-gatherers. This lifestyle had significant origins. Earlier, our ape ancestors are thought to have been driven out of some of the forests of East Africa, as climate changes turned isolated pockets of forest into grasslands. These apes, like modern chimpanzees, had derived most of their food from plants, but had occasionally killed and eaten small animals. Fewer suitable plant resources on the plains had probably motivated some of the hungrier apes to join meat scavengers. A few apes with sticks could easily drive buzzards away from what hyenas or dogs had left.
The first hominids (closer to human than to ape) evolved in this environment. Their diets began to include regular supplies of meat. Their physical form began to reflect their new lifestyle as hunter-gatherers. Their feet and legs adapted to long periods of standing and walking upright, thus freeing both hands to hold food or weapons while traveling. Their hands adapted to better grasp any tools they might use. Their brains grew bigger to make better use of such tools. At some point they acquired the ability to speak, enabling them to cooperate more effectively in hunting or other activities.
Bigger brains and speech allowed them to begin evolving culturally as well. They began to use more sophisticated tools. They noticed that they could eat more of what other hunting creatures ate if they used the edges of sharp stones to cut at the flesh of a dead animal, much as other meat-eaters used their teeth. They learned to knock rocks together in order to create such sharp edges. Stone tools opened new opportunities to consume animal products, often as food, often as tools (skins, horns, etc.). Hominid use for and appetite for the products of the hunt expanded.
It is not clear how dependent the earliest hominids were on scavenging. It is unlikely that they were able to kill larger game for themselves, however. So they probably entered the arena of the larger carnivores as scavengers, facing lots of competition. Wild dogs, hyenas, and even big cats do a lot of scavenging from each other. Overpowering a successful predator from another (or one’s own) species, with larger size or greater numbers, can be much easier than stalking and striking down a prey animal. A large band of hominids, wielding sticks and throwing stones, could enter the predators’ arena. But at least in the earliest years, hominids would have been near the bottom of the meat-eater pecking order. Lions, hyenas, and dogs not only steal kills from one another, they also kill and eat other predator species if given the chance. It is likely that early hominids just barely held their own. For the hominids not only had to compete for killed meat, they had to defend pregnant females and some very vulnerable young. In most situations they probably ate more plants than meat.
But over time, with culture, the hominids got better at carnivore activities. New tools began to increase the hominids’ bargaining power with the other meat-eaters. Perhaps the most powerful was fire. While fire has little use in making a kill, it can be used to fend off an attack. Hominid hunters would probably not have carried torches while stalking game, or even while stalking scavenging opportunities. This would have warned and scared away, in both instances, animals who could outrun them. But evening campfires made each night more secure, more restful. Fire was also useful in putting a point on a spear. Stone tools got better as well. Still, for most of the time hominids (this includes us humans) have been on earth, they have not been the most competitive of hunters.
True Humans, the Early Years
Anatomically modern humans evolved perhaps as early as 200,000 years ago, inheriting the lifestyle described above. Slowly they spread, displacing earlier hominid species and using their "modern" brains to develop their culture to new levels of sophistication. Around 30,000 years ago these changes had accumulated to a critical level. Stone tools reached a high level of sophistication. Humans began using them to carve wood and bone with great precision. The first artistic crafting emerged, both as carving and as painting. Stone points were made so that they could be lashed to spears. Other sticks were carved into spear throwers. A short time later the bow-and-arrow was invented.
Meanwhile, humans had begun an interspecies hunting partnership with dogs—the first animal domestication for humans and an unprecedented cooperation among social carnivores. The dog-human team soon ended the ageless struggle for dominance among the meat eaters. The hunting instincts and speed of the dogs, evolved over many more years than those of the humans, were joined in hunts by the shear power of the humans with their fire and their huge, stone, flying teeth. One for one, the lions had always had the advantage, though they’d never been able to beat hyenas or dogs when significantly outnumbered. But a healthy full-sized pack of Late Paleolithic humans, allied with domesticated dogs, could beat any group of lions—though most times the contest might be sufficiently bloody on both sides so as to make it undesirable to pick a fight. The new dog-human hunting teams didn’t merely dominate the inter-carnivore relationships. They brought new power to the hunter-prey relationship. Humans allied with dogs could kill prey species better than any other mammals had ever done before. Last, but perhaps not least, a domesticated dog, though usually treated as a second-class human, could provide a quick emergency meal.
Ecological Shock
The forces of a new era in human culture had been assembled. After a (geologically) brief period these forces would lead to the formation of complex human societies with complex institutions—including the state.
The new physical power of humans was extremely destabilizing ecologically. For millions of years apes had evolved as marginal predators. For hundreds of thousands of years, hominids had evolved as second class (or even lower ranking) predators. They had evolved culture and were, over a period of several generations, quite flexible with regard to their behavior compared to all other animals. But their instincts had not disappeared. And these were the instincts of a species which did not expect its violent power to prevail in most circumstances. Such a species, when the opportunity to kill quickly and blindly presented itself, might learn to kill joyfully, for the pleasure of knowing domination over other species—for sport. For some groups of hunters, this is what happened.
It is unlikely that all human cultures became addicted to blood sports. By the term "blood sport" I mean violent activity as a source of amusement or of spiritual satisfaction rather than as a means of defense or to satisfy physical needs. Some human cultures would have carried on much as they had before acquiring great violent powers. These "milder" cultures, probably the most common cultural type, would have been satisfied applying less effort to achieve the same old results. A few others took to the water, began to be fishermen, and found tougher competition amongst the sharks and whales. But a significant number of hunting cultures (I believe a small minority) adopted the notion of the trophy kill. Within these cultures it might be more accurate simply to say that amongst some individual hunters a style, an attitude, a spirit—perhaps stronger in some groups than others—was first tolerated, then encouraged.
Intoxicated by a consistent ability to beat the other carnivores and kill any game the other carnivores could kill, those hunters infected by the blood-sport spirit looked to surpass their former non-human rivals and each other. They discovered ways to kill even the largest grazers, adult mastodons, mammoths, and rhinos—previously beyond the reach of predatory mammals. They began to kill game in large numbers, far more than they could consume. They killed entire herds. Such massive blood-letting might very well have been uncommon. But it did occur, and over the centuries it took its toll, faster in some parts of the world, slower in others. In many places, blood-sport culture did not take hold for most of human history. Possibly, among most hunters, blood sports were considered quite vulgar. But blood sports continued to thrive, to spread. By this century, the carnage had reached all the land surfaces of the world.
New Food Sources for a New Ecology
By about 10,000 years ago the largest mammals were extinct in Europe, north Asia, and all of the Americas. In much of the world, the population of mid-sized game mammals was drastically reduced—a process which has continued. In such areas all hunter-gatherers began to face a challenge. The traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle became less attractive as game became less abundant. Many hunting cultures adopted a more respectful attitude toward the remaining game species. Two new lifestyles, however, offered entirely different approaches to obtaining adequate food.
For one of the new cultures, the "gathering" activities began centering around especially abundant seed foods, some of which began to sprout afresh around the campsites of those who’d gathered them. Over time these peoples learned to deliberately spread seeds in especially fertile areas and take up permanent residence nearby. Eventually it occurred to them that planting some of the seeds from the best yielding plants (rather than just a random selection of seeds) tended to produce better harvests. In this way the farming lifestyle emerged.
The second new culture adopted a strategy which was the opposite of that of the blood-sport culture. These peoples began to follow healthy herds of animals, consciously killing only as necessary. They began to perfect some of the principles of heredity, which had already been practiced with dogs. By killing the more aggressive individuals in a herd, the remaining part of the herd reproduced as a more easily controlled group. By killing the weaker individuals in the herd, the remaining herd tended to be a healthier and better food source. Soon these people and their dogs "owned" herds—regular and fairly easy to exploit supplies of meat. By protecting the prey species from other predators the herders kept more meat for themselves and kept many of their hunting skills sharpened. As dogs had much earlier become "second-class" members of the human community, so the herd species gradually became "third-class" members.
Fragile Populations
Both herdsmen and farmers, over time, developed relatively high-yield domesticated food species. It became possible to support ever larger and denser human populations on the best grazing or farming land. But in filling these lands to capacity, the new food-producing lifestyles became fragile. Both of the new economies could thrive only in suitable land, and only when blessed with good weather. At first, it might have been possible for those groups which found themselves with poor harvests or poor grazing (causing low birth rates in the herds), to move to new space. While sometimes inconvenient, this would have been a continuity of an old hunter-gatherers tradition. Hunter-gatherers could also intensify their struggle with the other predators, as a method of compensating for temporarily lower food supplies. But eventually all the good food-producing lands became occupied by humans who practiced domestication, and the predatory species were driven out. Under such conditions an especially poor harvest or weak herd left a community with insufficient food and no alternative but for some of them to starve.
Periodic starvation became a fact of life for those who had adopted the new lifestyles. Yet it was a pattern these people and their descendants, for thousands of years, would not be able to break. For they had lost hunter-gatherer skills and, even if they’d retained the skills, there were too many of them for the land. Yet enough of them would survive each famine to continue on with the lifestyle associated with domesticated food sources.
In an effort to better their lot, farmers and herders continued to develop ways to get higher yields from the same land. But such improvements, while expanding a community’s potential for a few years, actually made problems worse in the long run. When larger populations could be supported the population grew, thus making larger the number who must starve in bad times.
It is important to note, however, that this pattern affected only some of humanity, only a small minority in the beginning. For thousands of years after the first herding and farming cultures got started, most people still practiced the hunting and gathering lifestyle.
It is conceivable that many cultures developed many methods of coping with periodic famine. What is fairly clear, however, is that violence became a factor in all of the densely populated cultures that survived. It doesn’t take many violent people to set off a food panic, when all can see that there’s just not enough food for all to survive. Over time, the groups within any society which resorted to violence could impose starvation on their neighbors and would tend to be the ancestors of future generations. Or, at the least, the violence-prone groups would tend to be socially dominant in such societies. But it is not clear that the idea of violence began simply as a response to bad harvests.
Raider-Farmer Relations
The blood-sport cultures began to run out of large game. At some point it would have occurred to them that the contest between them and the predators was over, that humans were the ultimate hunters. And from that, it is not a large conceptual leap to begin seeing the old contest between predators as having taken a new form. It would be possible for at least some of the blood-sport cultures to see that their most worthy adversaries were not other hunting species, but other humans. Similarly, if traditional prey species became scarce, raids on the resources of other human communities could provide food.
But as some of the blood-sport cultures raided their neighbors, those neighbors began to develop defenses. Amongst the agriculturists, whose lifestyle did little to encourage martial arts, these defenses would be relatively weak on a per-capita basis. But denser agricultural communities would have had sheer numbers on their side, at least to the extent that raiders might not totally wipe out the community. The invention of the walled town established a rough balance of power with the raiders. In addition, any raiders near a town might be bribed to hunt the few remaining wild predator species which might wander into the farmers’ domain. This would not likely have gained many raiders a permanent place in a farmer community. But it may have served to build some very weak associations between some farmers and some raiders. During an especially bad famine, such raiders might ally with such farmers. Those farmers who did this might learn some martial skills. And even if none of the farmers developed friendship with any of the raiders, raider martial skills would be observed by some farmers, who (if they survived) might develop military ideas of their own. Such "martial farmers" could become the leaders in a walled town’s defense force, once the famine ended.
Herder-Raider Relations
Relations between the raiding blood-sport cultures and the herders would have been another matter, though. The raiders could have been treated as a particularly tough form of predatory mammal which threaten the herds, not completely different from the herdsmen themselves. The balance of power between raiders and herdsmen was more like a peer-to-peer relationship. The two probably established occasional truces, long enough to exchange some critical ideas. For the herdsmen, the idea that a foreign group of humans might be the source of food in a crisis could have come from the raiders. Such a foreign group might be another herding community, or perhaps a group of farmers. For the raiders, the idea that it is better not to totally wipe out the food source even if this is possible could have come from watching the herders’ extreme success with this strategy. And in places the raiders might be able to exist by simply keeping their cattle theft down to reasonable levels. During especially tough times, the raiders might even be able to make alliances with some herders against others, thus tipping the balance of power in large grazing areas. Over time, such alliances might become semi-permanent, giving the herders in the alliance an advantage over rival herders even in good times. The raiders could thus be, so to speak, "legitimized" as a source of violent strength available to some herders.
For brief periods herder-raider cooperation might begin to establish the concept of mutually voluntary roles for each culture, based conceptually on the model of domesticated animals. To the herders, allied raiders might be thought of in the same way as dogs—largely reliable second-class members of the community with special value during violent activities. Indeed herders might pit one raider group against another as the dogs were used against their cousins the wolves. But the raiders, ever conscious of status between groups, would likely have viewed the herders as the "dogs." Since each side would prefer to be at the top of the social hierarchy, the relations between herders and raiders, even when some alliance could be established, have never been very stable—though it would likely have been more viable than any raider-farmer alliance. In many areas, the various herder groups would have allied against the raiders during prosperous times. In the long run, the herders would have learned two things about the raiders: (1) that raiders could never be truly domesticated like dogs, but that (2) in extremely desperate times allying with raiders might mean the difference between survival and death for an individual herder group. Raiders survive to this day wavering between criminal and mercenary status. This is one reason why no state has ever won a "war on crime" nor ever really intends to do so.
Herder-Farmer Relations
But while the herders might never have settled into a stable view of the raiders, the herders would have some very clear thoughts about the farmers. A herder group could understand other herders, even if at war with them. And to a lesser extent a herder could understand a raider. But a farmer’s lifestyle would have been totally incomprehensible to a herder. In the best of times, this might not have prevented some wary trade between the two groups. But when the herders faced famine and had little to trade, they would have had a hard time ignoring any food the farmers had gathered.
Herders, even without raiders to serve as role models, would have been able to see the farmers as another species from which food could be taken via violence. Most likely, the food of farmers would not have been a herdsman’s first choice. But if grazing was poor within as wide a range that a herdsman knew about, yet a nearby farming village had stores of food, stealing from the farmer might have seemed a better choice than slaughtering more of an already weak and reduced herd. As towns grew up, and various crafts were perfected which required a settled residence, some of the herders might adopt raiding ways to gain these items as well. But on the whole, the strongest enticement to violence would be starvation.
For herders to sweep quickly into a farm town, kill a number of the defenders, and steal some of the food or other goods is essentially a raider tactic. Pure raider thinking calls for wanton killing and stealing with little thought to the future. Both herders and pure raiders could have used it. But part of the herder mentality included the notion of limiting the harvest from a prey species. So it would have occurred to some herders that they might not take all of a farm village’s wealth, nor destroy any more than necessary. This way the herders could come back again later should they so choose. And for many farm villages, there would have been an advantage to giving a portion of their goods to any thieves who agreed to accept it peacefully. In this way tribute relations would be built up between some herders and some farmers.
The Invention of the State
But a farm community which was set upon by several waves of thieves could not simply keep giving to each over and over again without eventually running out of food. So some farmers made special arrangements with nearby herders. Not only would the herders take just a part of the harvest, but they would guard the village against other raiding as long as they were in the area. The villagers would have been like a new kind of cattle. And over time, some of the herders might have come to appreciate the products of the villages so much that they decided to keep somewhat smaller herds of animals, while cultivating a permanent herd of humans. The farmers, in turn, might prefer to give a limited share of their crops to one set of herders who would guard them against more substantial losses to raiding. The essential relationships of the State had been invented.
To the herders this could appear as a very favorable arrangement. In times of famine, they would decide who would starve—and it would never be themselves. To the farmers there might have been little choice—more rebellious farmers being killed by the herders. However, some farmers would always be useful to the herders and so some could expect to survive each famine until good times returned. Over time the herders would tend to select the more docile farmers for survival. And the herders could also choose to raid neighboring towns to help feed their human cattle. This would especially be true if several neighboring towns were set up along these same lines, with different groups of herders dominating each one. Food riots within towns would be replace by food wars between towns. Farmers had already learned that their survival depended upon being associated with the most successful fighters during a crisis. As the role of fighter in the towns came to be taken over by herding cultures, the farmers learned that loyalty to specific herding families was associated with long-term survival for farming families. The lesson was learned well enough that farmers often found it expedient to accept as masters a "foreign" herder group which had driven out their old masters.
The State’s Anatomy Evolves
As time went on, and especially as agriculturally based communities got larger, herder-fighters spent less and less time with their non-human cattle. They changed from herders to city dwellers—a caste of professional warriors—a nobility. But city life dulled their battle skills over generations. To make up the difference, the nobles recruited other fighters. Sometimes they chose peoples from other herding backgrounds, fresh from a nomadic life. But other herders might choose to challenge the nobles for power. So at times raiders were recruited, since they lacked a background in managing "lesser" creatures and could not so easily stage a coup based on a shift in "commoner" loyalty. Other times some of the farmers were given limited training in martial arts and used as auxiliary forces.
This is the origin of the traditional state. And the basic relationships remain in place to this day, though other institutions have emerged to complicate things. At its core, a state is a feudal arrangement whereby a population takes direction from leaders who promise military security in exchange for various economic goods and services. The leaders maintain an army which is composed of several standard elements.
At the top is an officer corps which has a special relationship with the "civilian" political leadership, and which specializes in managing the armed forces rather than in actually fighting as warriors. They are the heirs to the average herdsmen, who knew how to manage cattle, but who did not necessarily aspire to tribal leadership. Two types of warriors take orders from the officers.
Ordinary soldiers, who may be recruited from the general population, are trained to commit violence on command but only on command. They are the "cattle of war," often referred to in modern times as "cannon fodder." They do not crave violence on a regular basis. They must usually be stampeded into it with fears generated by the politicians and officers. They can be expected to stop fighting when ordered to do so.
Then there are the heirs to the raiders—literally the "dogs of war." These warriors want to fight all the time and have to be kept in check, surrounded by ordinary soldiers who don’t identify with them and who will gladly kill them if they get too far out of line. Often organized into special units with elite names—"shock troops," "guards," "grenadiers," "airborne," or simply "mad dogs"—these troops can be counted on to start a fight. Once the "enemy" has been attacked by mad dogs, the enemy will counter-attack against "cattle" troops with nearly identical uniforms, who fight back as a defensive maneuver even if they’d not been motivated for war up to that time. Mad dogs are useful for invigorating a stale campaign as well as for committing atrocities.
Relations between the army and other social elements are handled by two types of diplomacy which we may simply call internal and external. External diplomacy is the relationship between the army and other armies or non-conquered non-military peoples. Internal diplomacy is the relationship between the army and the conquered non-military population. Initially both types of diplomacy were handled by military leaders directly. But over time, especially as the society controlled with the army became larger and more complex, non-combatant specialists, "politicians," began to handle diplomatic issues. For foreign affairs, non-combatant "diplomatic" officers became useful. For internal affairs, a class of non-combatant administrators emerged.
The State in Complex Society
In many especially complex societies, the state has come to be represented more by its politicians than by its military. But behind the veil of words is still the threat of force. The loyalty of the non-military members of society still rests upon the belief that the potential for violence by the state is preferable to the potential for violence by other groups. It is not necessary that all of the subordinate population believe this. It may not even be necessary for a majority to believe it. But in each statist society there is a required critical mass of voluntary support among those outside the state—the "ordinary citizen" or "commoner." The state’s supporters can act as informants when unrest among their fellow commoners becomes a serious threat, and the military can be called upon to crush a potential revolt.
_ It is possible, for a time, for a state to maintain itself by pure violence, using what is essentially a pure raider strategy. In such a situation, however, none of the commoners sees the state as being in any way preferable to foreign or domestic raiders. Consequently, the support from the commoners which is compelled by threat of violence will be much weaker than if a significant number of them saw advantages to the regime above them. So if foreign invaders come, the commoner is not particularly worried about prospects under a new regime. But if a rivalry occurs between factions within the state, one faction of which offers a less violent regime, significant popular support may occur to give the "lenient" faction an edge. And when foreigners threaten to invade, the non-combatants have some incentive to vigorously support the military.
The State Loses Its Ecological Foundations
The ecological forces which provide a foundation for the state are being eroded. Food wars, wars based on the absolute physical inability for all to be fed, are now obsolete. Famine comes when food is scarce in a particular region. Famines are local. Since W.W.II a network of transportation and communication (much of it stimulated by military concerns) has been in place which makes the delivery of food to local areas relatively easy. Almost any small village will have some electronic communication with the outside world. No famine can go unnoticed. International relief agencies have used this knowledge to solicit adequate funds to supply any area where food has become critically scarce. Aircraft capable of transporting heavy cargoes can deliver emergency food supplies to any region. All-terrain vehicles can take it quickly from airfields to any remote area. This world-wide network of food distribution is always available to overwhelm the old problem of fragile local food supplies.
Physically, no one ever needs to starve. And everyone, world-wide, knows it—though the full consequences of it are not widely contemplated. Any local famine, including the rescue efforts, is a story carried by all news agencies worldwide. Also in the news is any raider behavior which blocks food supplies. It is always made clear that if people are starving it is because food shipments are being stopped by violence. It used to be that on the local level people resorted to violence to get food, and valued the presence of anyone who would help them steal food. Now those who steal food are not saviors for the few who ally with them, but the reason why there is still starvation. Raider behavior has lost its only justification. What remains is simply sadism.
Modern Culture Replaces Statist Culture
In relatively recent times, the support of non-combat members of society in time of war has become essential to an army. Larger and larger armies have been formed, too large to live off the land. Supplies of various types from the "homeland" have become essential to military success, even for smaller forces. Technology has become critical as well, both for weapon systems and other supplies. The enthusiasm of civilians during a war can be critical to victory. The technical ability of civilians to manufacture and deliver sophisticated products to _the military is also critical. Under such pressures, modern societies have changed.
Technically sophisticated production and distribution systems require decentralized economic systems and decentralized arenas for research and development of new ideas. The values of those who work in such systems are different from those of the traditional supporters of states. Career success replaces large families as a sign of individual achievement. Thus the new economies do not have the population pressures of earlier ones. This even further reduces the concern with possible famine. The primary tool for personal advancement is education, rather than control of land or other tangible wealth. Thus conflict over limited land and (in the short term) limited amounts of tangible wealth is being replaced by almost infinite possibilities for sharing the mastery of ideas and skills by average workers. Zero-sum thinking persists among many people, but the argument that such thinking is inherent to the human condition is much harder to sustain.
Efforts by states to commandeer the products and services of such workers have greatly restricted their production, as have efforts by states to replace these workers with slaves or serfs. Military campaigns must now be presented to a "home" population as fights for "freedom" or against "oppression." Naked aggression is still the end product in many cases. But exposure of such motives by state officials is becoming easier, and with this exposure the enthusiasm for war grows weaker in the civilian populations whose support has become essential. Weakening too is the basic respect for the laws of the state, which are increasingly seen as vehicles for special interest rather than a source of justice or for "order" in the face of potential "chaos."
Most citizens have not begun to consider alternatives. But they are
at the edge of the market for liberty, if not yet intellectually sophisticated
traders in that market. So the times are ripe for libertarians. To borrow
the words of Winston Churchill: it is not yet the beginning of the end
of the struggle against statism, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
D
Notes:
1 While this essay can be read alone, it does fit into a sequence which has appeared in Formulations, beginning with my "From Free Families to Statist Societies and Back Again" Formulations, Vol IV, No. 3, then continues with Roderick Long's "Was the State Inevitable" Formulations, Vol. IV, No. 4 (Summer 1997). The next installment is my "Food Wars and the Origin of the State", which appears in this issue. [Web Editor's note: the discussion continues in Formulations, Vol V, No. 3 as "Continued Dialog on the Origin of the State". See also Mary Ruart's related comments in this issue, "Aggression a Luxury, Not a Necessity"]
2 Especially in "Political Curriculum: Education
Essential to Keep a Free Society", Formulations, Vol. III, No.
3
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