Ayn Rand, Anarchist

The most significant logical inconsistency in “official” Objectivism is its advocacy of minarchism, or a limited government. Official Objectivist doctrine holds that a limited government is a necessary good, and is required to protect individual rights.

Rand was fairly direct in her dismissal and condemnation of anarchism, and this antipathy has become official Objectivist dogma over the years.

However, as I will show here, minarchism is in fact inconsistent with Objectivism, and Rand’s criticism of anarchism doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

Indeed, there is much in Rand’s work that demonstrates her support for Rothbardian anarchocapitalism, contrary to the claims of Objectivist dogma, especially as espoused by representatives of the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI).

Rand’s Critique of Anarchism

To begin, let’s review Rand’s criticism of anarchism.

In “The Nature of Government”¹ Rand writes:

Anarchy, as a political concept, is a naive floating abstraction: a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along and who would precipitate it into the chaos of gang warfare.

First, note that this is just an assertion of what may happen without an “organized government”. No evidence or reasoning is offered in its support.

Second, it’s important to understand that “anarchy” doesn’t mean “no rules”. It means “no rulers”. It is certainly possible to have rules in an anarchist society, and methods of dealing with criminals.

Rand’s assertion clearly assumes an incorrect interpretation of “anarchy” as “no rules”. A society with no rules quite possibly would be at the mercy of criminals, and likely to descend into gang warfare.

However this is not what anarchy actually means. Therefore Rand’s critique is invalid.

Rand continues:

But the possibility of human immorality is not the only objection to anarchy: even a society whose every member were fully rational and faultlessly moral, could not function in a state of anarchy; it is the need of objective laws and of an arbiter for honest disagreements among men that necessitates the establishment of a government.

Again, this assumes that an anarchist society would not have objective rules or an arbiter for honest disagreements among men. As already observed above, this is simply a misunderstanding of what anarchy is. So this objection is also an attack on a straw-man, and irrelevant to the real concept of anarchy.

On Competing Governments

Rand goes on to criticize the concept of “competing governments”:

Accepting the basic premise of the modern statists — who see no difference between the functions of government and the functions of industry, between force and production, and who advocate government ownership of business — the proponents of “competing governments” take the other side of the same coin and declare that since competition is so beneficial to business, it should also be applied to government. Instead of a single, monopolistic government, they declare, there should be a number of different governments in the same geographical area, competing for the allegiance of individual citizens, with every citizen free to “shop” and to patronize whatever government he chooses.

This objection is particulary fascinating coming from someone who in fact did shop for a different government from the one she was born under.

It evades the indisputable facts that there already are competing governments on the planet, that individuals are already free to “shop” and to patronize whatever government they choose (subject to immigration restrictions), and that this is precisely the escape hatch that enables many individuals, including, significantly, Rand herself, to escape totalitarian dictatorships.

Her objection includes the qualifier of multiple governments “in the same geographical area” to construct the straw-man that she next proceeds to attack, but it should be noted that the concept of competing governments doesn’t imply that they must exist within the same geographical area. There could just as well be competing governments in different geographical areas, as in fact there are.

The Function of Government

The accusation that proponents of competing governments see no difference between force and production is completely incoherent. Rand writes:

Remember that forcible restraint of men is the only service a government has to offer. Ask yourself what a competition in forcible restraint would have to mean.

In fact, forcible restraint is not the only service a government has to offer. The main service a government has to offer is in fact to meet the “need of objective laws and of an arbiter for honest disagreements”, as she correctly identified above.

Competition between governments isn’t competition in forcible restraint, as Rand self-contradictorily asserts here. It is in fact competition in the production of objective rules for society, and in the arbitration of honest disagreements.

This is perfectly exemplified by Rand’s own life story.

If the competition between governments really were “a competition in forcible restraint”, Rand would have opted to stay in the USSR, which was clearly the winner in the use of forcible restraint. Instead she opted to “shop” for a government that employed much less forcible restraint, such as the one of the USA.

Clearly she was shopping for the government that offered better rules, not the one that exercised more force.

This demonstrates that the competition between governments is in the production of objective regulations, not in the exercise of forcible restraint.

Rand vs. Straw Man

Having set up the straw man based on the idea of multiple governments “in the same geographical area”, Rand then proceeds to knock it down:

suppose Mr. Smith, a customer of Government A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr. Jones, a customer of Government B, has robbed him; a squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones’ house and is met at the door by a squad of Police B, who declare that they do not accept the validity of Mr. Smith’s complaint and do not recognize the authority of Government A. What happens then? You take it from there.

Of course, if we just posit that the two governments don’t overlap in geographical area, this becomes a non-issue. They can still be competing governments, if Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones are free to choose among them by “voting with their feet” and moving to the territory of whichever government they prefer.

But even if the two governments did overlap in the same geographical area, it’s only Rand’s straw man assumption that the scenario would proceed as she describes. And a laughably unrealistic and simplistic assumption at that. In a more realistic scenario, the two governments would surely have pre-established protocols to resolve such situations, perhaps through arbitration by a pre-agreed third party, without having to wage all-out war against each other in every instance.

Rules Unrelated to Individual Rights

A central tenet of the “minarchist” or “limited government” position advocated by official Objectivism is that the government’s role must be limited to the protection of individual rights.

However, in reality, a government, or a private entity providing the services traditionally provided by governments, needs to provide much more than just the basic protection of individual rights.

The protection of individual privacy is one such service. There is no individual right violated by the publication of true private information about a person. Indeed, any restriction on such publication is itself a violation of the publisher’s individual rights. Nevertheless, in a civilized society, the violation of individual privacy requires regulation.

Individual privacy is a specific case of the more general issue of regulation of intellectual artefacts, which also includes trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights, and patents. Rand mis-identified these as “intellectual property”, but there is no legitimacy to the idea, for example, that a patent monopoly granted for an arbitrary duration by a government bureaucracy is a form of property.

There are many other issues that require regulation in a civilized society but don’t fit under the umbrella of protection of individual rights. In some cases, the rational regulatory approach might be to proactively prevent the violation of individual rights, rather than acting only after a violation occurs. A minarchist government is unable to regulate such issues.

Private Regulation and Anarclaves

In an anarchocapitalist (ancap) society, most regulations would be premised on private property rights. In my view, the most likely and practical implementation of an ancap society would involve a multitude of competing anarclaves (short for “anarchocapitalist enclaves”).

An anarclave is a proprietary community located on private property. The owner of each anarclave determines the regulations for that anarclave.

Fundamental issues that all or many anarclaves agree or cooperate on could be handled at a higher, inter-anarclave level.

An ancap society comprised of anarclaves would not have multiple competing “governments” within a geographical area. It would have multiple competing anarclaves, each with its own distinct geographical area. Thus, scenarios such as the one envisioned by Rand above would not normally arise.

There is much more to be said on the topic of anarclaves, but that will have to wait for another time. For now, it is sufficient to note that anarclaves provide a property-rights based means of creating and enforcing rules in a society without a government.²

The Sparseness of Rand’s Politics

The quoted passages above are the main substance of Rand’s attacks on anarchism. They can be disregarded as it’s clear she is addressing only a misconception and a straw man version of anarchism, not the real concept.

It’s interesting that Rand didn’t write in much detail about a government consistent with Objectivist principles and laissez-faire capitalism. I don’t know how much she thought about this topic, but her actual written work on it is extremely sparse.

Her most original and breakthrough work is in the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics. In each of these areas, she expressed her ideas in quite a bit of detail. In the field of politics, in contrast, her development of Objectivist principles was extremely basic, and uncharacteristically contradictory.

However, other than the misconceived attacks on anarchism quoted above, much of what she did write is in fact quite consistent with anarchocapitalism, and inconsistent with minarchism.

Galt’s Gulch and Secession

For starters, in Atlas Shrugged, Galt’s Gulch is in fact an anarclave. It is located on private property (Mulligan’s Valley) and the owner sets the rules.

We can also find explicit support for secession in her non-fiction work. In the essay “Global Balkanization”³, Rand wrote:

If a province wants to secede from a dictatorship, or even from a mixed economy, in order to establish a free country—it has the right to do so.

This is the essence of anarchocapitalism. If any group of people has the right to secede from a country in order to establish a more free country, then ancaps have the right to secede to form privately regulated anarclaves.

Rand’s position on secession is in perfect agreement with that of Murray Rothbard, who coined the term anarchocapitalism:

Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible ‘anarchy’, why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person?⁴

Clearly, Rand was in fact a supporter of anarchocapitalism. She didn’t state it in those terms, but her position above is quite clear. The “anarchy” that she criticized was a misconception. But she supported the real concept.

A Fully Free Society

This is Rothbard’s definition of an anarchist society:

I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual.⁵

Compare that to Rand’s definition of laissez-faire capitalism, the “ideal political-economic system”:

It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others.⁶

The two definitions are nearly identical.

Rand’s support for anarchocapitalism is further reinforced by this quote from “Government Financing in a Free Society”⁷:

In a fully free society, taxation—or, to be exact, payment for governmental services—would be voluntary.

Rand’s “fully free society”, where payment for government services is voluntary, is (assuming the government has no other avenues of legal coercion) exactly the same as Rothbard’s “anarchist society” where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against any individual.

Clearly, Rand and Rothbard are not as opposed as the “official” position pushed by the ARI would have you believe.

In fact they are in perfect agreement.

A Bizarre Delay

Strangely, though, Rand writes, in the same essay, that:

Any program of voluntary government financing has to be regarded as a goal for a distant future.

By her own statement, a society can only be “fully free” when payment for government services is voluntary. Taken together with this last statement, then, Rand is clearly saying that a fully free society has to be regarded as a goal for a distant future.

Given that involuntary taxation is in fact just theft, she is also saying that theft by government must be tolerated until “a distant future”.

Why? That makes no sense.

Why should men wait for a distant future to live in a fully free society, when they have the right to secede from a less-than-free society right now to create a more free one?

Rand provides no answer to this.

Nevertheless it’s perfectly clear that she understood that a fully free society is one where there is no possibility of legal coercion against an individual or his property, ie. an ancap society.

Her willingness to compromise on the establishment of a fully free society is bizarrely out of character, and inconsistent with Objectivism. As she wrote:

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.⁸

How could any compromise with statism “for now” possibly end in any other way than totalitarian dictatorship?

Rand Destroys Minarchism

Here’s another Rand quote that demonstrates the fundamental incompatibility of minarchism and Objectivism:

A group, as such, has no rights. A man can neither acquire new rights by joining a group nor lose the rights which he does possess.⁹

This implies that a government (which is a group) can have no rights greater than that of individuals.

That’s precisely what “no rulers” (aka anarchy) means — that there is no class of “rulers” with greater rights than regular individuals.

Minarchism requires government to have greater rights than regular individuals. Without this it couldn’t have a monopoly on the use of force.

Thus, minarchism is logically incompatible with Objectivism.

Capitalism is Anarchism

Rand wrote:

In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.¹⁰

It can easily be shown that a complete separation of state and economics is impossible. Even the most minimal minarchist state will need to purchase goods and services. It will need vehicles, office buildings, office supplies, weapons, etc. It will need to purchase these in the market.

By participating in the market as a significant purchaser, the state will be entangled with the economy. Amongst other effects, the businesses it purchases from will have an advantage over their competitors.

The only way to satisfy Rand’s requirement for “full capitalism”, a complete separation of state and economics, is to eliminate the state.

As Rothbard correctly observed:

Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. Not only are they compatible, but you can’t really have one without the other. True anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism.¹¹