Instead of Violence

잭이 빌려준 오랜된 책.

아무리 구글링을 해봐도 자료가 없고, 출판된지 50년이 되어가는 이 책은 낡아빠져 금방 가루가 될 것만 같다.

하지만 그 당시 작가가 표현하고 있는 미국 사회의 모습과 불합리함이 절절하게 다가와 블로그에 옮겨놓는다.

 

Subtitle: The case for the non-coercive society

Written by Leonard E. Read - January 1973 -

 

Instead of Violence

 "I want less talk and more action."

That sentiment of a business leader typifies the initial reaction of many persons when they suddenly awaken to the increasing dangers which beset their liberty. They demand action.

 To most people, in spite of this "let's do something" attitude, the problem is all rather nebulous. Things are not quite right, it is readily agreed. There are strikes with their paralyzing effects; idle workers standing in front of work to be done. a growing national debt which, despite political assurances to the contrary, forebodes an evil day, perhaps not too far ahead; numerous individuals who, by the mere exercise of their capricious wills, can throw millions of American families into chaos; prices going higher; government getting bigger, and demands for vast extension of the same as a cure for the ills it creates; a growing number of people in the world believing themselves the proper objects of our charity; class hatreds developing along occupational and other lines; world-wide police actions accompanying cries for a security that the mad mess denies; more wars in the offing. No, things aren't quite right. And the record, over a period of years, seems to indicate a whole string of costly, dismal failures in our attempt to set them right.

 Is there some common fault which serves as the root of all these ills, a fault that can be defined and for which treatment can ve prescribed?

 

Man is interdependent

 The population in America would soon be zero if every individual elected to live as a hermit. Perhaps as much as 99% of our present population would perish in even a primitive, foraging society. For instance, there were only several hundred thousand Indians here before us; their number was limited not by their inability to breed, but by the inability of a foraging society to feed. There are now well over 200,000,000 Americans with a higher standard of living than any people have ever known. Why? Because our economy is more efficient than that of a hermit or of foraging natives. The further advanced the economy, the more people it will support at a high level of living. This is by way of saying that the size of the population and the standard of living it enjoys is ultimately determined by the perfection of specialization, division of labor, and exchange. For man is interdependent! And his existence on this earth beyond a primitive state requires a recognition of this fact and a knowledge of how to deal with it skillfully.

 It is true that this fact of interdependence is widely recognized. But how to deal with it skillfully is where divergence of opinion in social affairs originates. This divergence takes the shape of two diametrically opposed recommendations. One commends life in accordance with the principle of violence. The other commends life in accordance with the principle of love. It is important, at the outset, to call these two opposed principles for social conduct by their correct names.

 

The Principle of Violence

 As will be developed later, the principle of violence finds widespread application all over the world, in America as elsewhere. But to illustrate what is meant by violence, I shall choose a modern instance, one among hundreds of familiar instances, one that most people, not having reflected on the matter, fail to evaluate in terms of violence.

 The familiar instance is public housing. A citizen is compelled to give of the fruits of his labor to meet the housing "needs" of others. Freedom of choice as to what he does with his own capital and income (property) is denied him. Freedom of choice gives way to the dictation of an authority, a dictate backed by brute force - violence! Actually, in a strict sense, the only choice a citizen has in this instance is between obedience or death. This may sound extreme, but nonetheless it is true. Suppose, for example, that a person decides to exercise, absolutely, his freedom of choice concerning payment for a government housing project. Suppose that he decides not to pay his share of the cost because he believes that the building of houses is not a proper function of government. Suppose that he deducts this from his tax payments. What would happen?

 

Policemen with Guns

 Since the government's claim becomes the first lien on everything a citizen owns, a judgment for incomplete payment of taxes would finally be rendered against his property - his home, for instance. If the citizen still refused to pay his share of the government housing project - and if he refused to vacate his property that had been attached by government - policemen with guns would eventually appear to enforce the government order. Suppose that he still refused to acquiesce. Suppose that he met the use of physical force by using physical force in return, which would be his only remaining method of exercising freedom of choice and carrying out his initial intention. He would be shot! The justification for shooting him would be "for resisting an officer," but the issue would remain the same. The citizen would have done nothing more than hold fast to his resolve not to support socialized housing, using the least violent means, step by step, to hold firmly by his convictions.

 The reason that most of us do not think of government coercion as meaning obedience under penalty of death is because we almost always pay our part of the cost of government housing, electricity, and other similar projects before the shooting begins. Usually we acquiesce before the ultimate meaning of compulsion is realized. Thus we are unacquainted with its true implications.

 

Early American Experiment

 The principle of violence found acceptance early in American history. The Pilgrim Fathers, after landing at Plymouth Rock, were in dire economic straits. Not unlike their progeny of our own times they thought they could not, during a period of stress and difficulty, rely on the actions of freemen in production, distribution, or charity. Their interdependence, very plain and real to these forebears of ours, must they reasoned, be attended to by some intervening authority. Men acting freely, the identical men who so clearly recognized their interdependence, could not, they thought, be trusted to act in their own interests! The answer: violence!

True, the Pilgrim Fathers did not call what they did by the ugly name of violence. But as has been demonstrated, this is what aggressive force is. The Pilgrim Fathers applied aggressive, as distinguished from defensive force. They attempted to effect communization by force. Every Pilgrim, regardless of how little or how much he produced, was required to deliver the fruits of his labor to a communal or community storehouse. He was permitted to withdraw the stores in accordance with "need" not the individual Pilgrim's idea of need but the law's decree of his need. These Pilgrims put into effect, not by charity or the goodness of their hearts, a principle later stated by St. Simon, and still later held up as an ideal by Karl Marx: "...from each according to ability; to each according to need." They socialized the fruits of their labor. There was a common ownership of the means of production - communalization by force. They were communists in the term's purest form. They had chosen to live in accordance with the principle of violence.

 

Communism Rejected

 There was a most persuasive reason why the Pilgrims finally gave up communism. They began to starve. Many died. Violence, as a method to effect social conduct, was forsworn. Each according to merit became the rule - that is, to each the fruits of his labor. And they prospered. These practitioners began the pattern for the American way: individual freedom, and personal responsibility for one's own actions.

 This turned out to be superior to other ways. According to the record, this way was so good that Twentieth Century Americans applied violence (unwisely, I believe) to keep others out of our country, while many foreign governments resorted to violence to keep their people at home. This American way had several distinctive tendencies, among them:

 1. The doctrine of individual immunity against governmental power over peaceful actions. This immunity extended to the individual in respect to his property, in respect to his physical person, and in respect to his mind, or thought and expression.

 2. A government of laws and not of men.

 3. The doctrine of local self-government.

 4. The principle that governmental mandate and office are a public trust, to be exercised in strictest independence of all personal interests, prejudices, or passions, for the maintenance of individual liberty and the preservation of the public order, all to be done as related to the welfare of all individuals.

 5. Avoidance of entanglements in the politics of European or other counties, and the corollary of this doctrine which advises resistance to the interference of Europe or Asia in the politics of the American continent.

 

The Reason for Government

 A point worthy of note is that this American way was not entirely devoid of violence; violence was merely less exercised here than previously in other countries. This meant that government was strictly limited; that there was a minimum of organized violence.

 But government , as a principle, had seemingly sound theory to support it. The reasoning went something like this: Each individual has an inalienable right to life. An essential concomitant of this right is the right to protect that life. Obviously, maximum liberty could not be assured by letting all citizens carry their own guns. The straightest shooters would soon be in command. What to do? Appoint an agent. Turn all guns, all force to be used for personal protection, over to him. Give him a monopoly of the coercive power. The agent, thus endowed with power, could then protect all citizens in the pursuit of their home life, their productive life, and their religious life. Each person would be free to do as he pleased up to the point of injury to others. And each would be responsible for his own welfare, with Christian charity to take up the slack. That was the theory.

 Many Americans understood this agent, government, to be what it is: legal and organized police force. They had an appreciation of violence. They knew that it could be used to suppress, restrain, restrict, destroy. Restriction and destruction by government, to be useful, must be confined to that which is bad: fraud, private violence, conspiracy and theft or other predatory practices. But police force - violence by government or otherwise - is, patently, not a direct, creative force. Thus, in the original plan, all creative functions were to be carried on by such voluntary, cooperative, and competitive elements as the population contained. Government was to be confined to the protection of personal liberty.

 

Officials Are Still Persons

 These Americans who held to this societal arrangement were also keenly aware of the powers vested in their elected agent. After all, this agent was but a person or persons having normal weaknesses, including greed for power over others, plus the dangerous monopoly of the coercive weapons! It was because of a profound realization of this danger that these Americans attempted limitation of their agent. The Constitution and the Bill of Right, with their separation of the executive, judicial, and legislative powers, were among the devices they employed to avert the dangers of unrestricted power that political theory predicted and history confirmed. They had an unprecedented success - for a time.

 It was because this practice of the principle of violence was on a lesser scale than ever before attempted that accounted for the mighty surge that was America's. Here in this country, was a greater release of free human energy than history reveals in any other instance.

 

No Aggression

 Personally, I am opposed to the initiation of violence in any form, by any body, or by any agency, government or otherwise. I cannot make inspired violence square with ethical concepts. Aggressive coercion, whether socialized medicine or initiating war with Russia, is at odds with principles which seem right. How this brute force can be used and be considered moral, except to restrain violence otherwise initiated, is beyond my capacities to reason. Even the American theory of government, which has always appealed to me, raises two questions to which, thus far, I have been unable to find answers:

 1. Can violence be instituted, regardless of how official or how limited in intention, without begetting violence outside officialdom and beyond the prescribed limitation?

 2. Is not limitation of government, except for relatively short periods, impossible? Will not the predatory instincts of some men, which government is designed to suppress, eventually appear in the agents selected to do the suppressing? These instincts, perhaps, are inseparable companions of power. As a private citizen the predator person is only one among millions. As an agent of government he becomes one over millions. If there be criminals among us, what is to keep them from gaining and using the power of government? Neither theory nor experience have, so far, supplied me with reassuring answers.

 Let me repeat: Organized violence, though limited better than ever before, characterized early America. In addition, a horrible infraction of the American theory appeared in the institution of slavery. But, because these instances of the principle of violence were so minor as compared with the total energy, the people prospered better than had other peoples. Perhaps it was too good to be true.

 

Protection and Dependency

 This haven of free and independent men, as decades passed into history, began to develop protected and dependent men. The exigencies of free immigration, free trade, free competition in services as well as in commodities, and responsibility for individual welfare, came to be thought of as credos for a hardier race of men, only for such men as had made our country what it was.

 It isn't easy to identify the growing items of violence initiated. Who can appraise the significance of immigration laws in a county sprung from immigrants? Who can assess the meaning of the protective tariff imposed by a people who got their start by overthrowing trade tyrannies imposed on them? What will be written in the final judgment book of a nation whose citizens were "educated" by force, whose "prosperity" depended on violence?

 The answers to these questions are dependent on each individual's value judgments. For my part, I have no faith whatever in any "good" that can come from these measures based on violence.