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Statism and Anarchism
Clearly delineated against them, classical liberalism stands between statism and anarchism. The statist attitude overrates the benignity and creative potential of government, considering it the instrument by which we can build the kind of society that we think good and desirable. The anarchist stance exaggerates the negative side of the state, viewing it as an unmitigated evil that is invariably immoral and dysfunctional.
Both views fail to grasp how the evolutionary process that brings the state about affects its character, making it a fundamentally ambivalent phenomenon in which suitable and disadvantageous elements blend and intermix.
In order to survive man must be able to exercise aggression, power, dominance, governance in appropriate forms and measures. There are constant trials going on to establish under which circumstances, in what combinations and in which degrees of intensity these elements need to be applied. In the process, maldevelopment, and error may occur, possibly causing significant harm. But then, there are limits to human destructiveness.
Certain requirements of survival need to be met, lest the species suffer extinction. In the long run, therefore, types of action tend to prevail that are of limited destructiveness and have much potential for constructive outcomes. Analogous constraints apply to the state, which is exposed to selective pressure that favours what is suitable for survival and discards what is inimical to it.
Historic episodes of extreme statism prove to be short-lived: national socialism collapsed after only 12 years; the communist experiments embarked upon all over the world lasted not longer than the life of a human being. This only goes to show that there are intrinsic limits both to statist conceit that views government as an all powerful moulder of the specie’s fate as well as to the state’s destructiveness, which anarchism regards to be absolute.
Written in March 2013
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