Importance of State Derived LAw
An Argument for the Benefit of Laws
Humans are social animals who need rules to cooperate. Most disputes are resolved without state authority. My roommate can ask me to stop playing music in the morning, and we can settle the disagreement through negotiation. Neither of us needs to call the police or go to court because most disagreements can be resolved through conversation or compromise. In this respect, anarchists are correct. Human beings can resolve most conflicts without invoking the state.
Anarchists do not claim that an anarchist society would be free of conflict. As I understand it, they argue that disputes could be managed through voluntary association. My problem is what happens when neither side accepts the other side's judgment. Suppose I go to a marketplace and trade my wine for another vendor's tool. The tool breaks after a few days, so I demand a replacement or refund. I argue that the vendor sold me a faulty tool. He argues that I used it improperly and that the fault is mine. To avoid conflict, we tried to negotiate, but neither of us changed our position.
What resolves this dispute in an anarchist society without binding law? “If every vendor has a different rule, trade will be especially difficult because there will be less social trust when dealing with strangers. Communal consensus is too vague to guarantee an outcome, even if there is a communal consensus, because the law isn't codified, one can't accept the predictability defined law ensures. For instance, if I cross the street, this self-organized community has completely different rules than this one, and this one has completely different, etc. How am I supposed to trade across community if in one community has a different standard of due care from a vendor than another? I get sued in community A for selling cigarettes to teens, but another self-organizing community allows it. What if the community as a whole decides smoking is a serious health issue and they want to regulate smoking or underage drinking? How can they publish a binding decision without violating Anarchist praxis?
Without a peaceful way to resolve our dispute, violence becomes the answer. Even in a stateist society with law codes, people still fight for plenty of reasons. Imagine how much worse of a problem it will be without a justice or court system to mediate.
The law must be binding and coercive. Any nonbinding solution (which anarchism ensures there is no authority to coerce) is useless because anyone can ignore it. My data as proof is the united nations and the anarchism in the international community. There is no state for states, and the result is that while within nations there is order, certainty, rights, and peace, outside of states without a state state, you have war, imperialism, and exploitation on a far greater scale than within states. I would argue that states do more to persevere rights through legal definition and constitutionals where states restrain their power. Restraint and accountability are very important to the legitimacy of states.
The anarchist alternative where there is no state to violate your rights, yes, but you have no insurance against your rights being violated by others, individuals, or state mimicking organizations like gangs. There is chaos between states, but not as much within.
Thomas Hobbes Leviathan
“For as amongst masterlesse men, there is perpetuall war, of every man against his neighbour; no inheritance, to transmit to the Son, nor to expect from the Father; no propriety of Goods, or Lands; no security; but a full and absolute Libertie in every Particular man: So in States, and Common-wealths not dependent on one another, every Common-wealth, (not every man) has an absolute Libertie, to doe what it shall judge (that is to say, what that Man, or Assemblie that representeth it, shall judge) most conducing to their benefit. But withall, they live in the condition of a perpetuall war, and upon the confines of battel, with their frontiers armed, and canons planted against their neighbours round about.”
History if data, if a solution can work, that vast sum of data will have a case to examine the universality of states and failure of every anarchist society, unlike socialist who can point to numerous examples that suggest that data does not favour anarchist praxis.
My problem with the anarchist argument that we don't need law to tell us murder is wrong, is that while everyone may agree that murder is wrong, our moral principles only exist when we are confident in our survival. Stable moral behavior depends partly on stable social conditions. If there is no social trust, people have stronger incentives to violate their principles to survive. Look at what people do in natural disasters. Some people retain their morality, but others in their desire to live selfishly hoard resources, cut evacuation lines, or abandon family. We only know if we are right about ourselves when we don't have that privilege of stability.
If I believe that someone else can steal from me without consequence, I have an incentive to steal first. If I believe that nobody will protect me from violence, I have an incentive to aggressively protect myself through violence. A legal system changes these incentives by making certain behavior costly and establishing predictable consequences for violating rules.
Order is purpose of law. A legal system establishes predictable rules for disputes that individuals cannot resolve themselves. In the marketplace example, the law can establish standards for responsibility, evidence, contracts, and a vendor's duty of care. There could be a rule about refunds that the vendor has to follow that would resolve our dispute. Instead of deciding the dispute according to whoever is stronger or more willing to use violence, both parties can appeal to rules that existed before the dispute occurred.
Law also makes trade possible between people who do not know or trust each other. Hammurabi's Code regulated loans contracts, merchants property, and commercial disputes creating enforceable obligations between people engaged in economic transactions. Contracts required witnesses, records, repayment, and liability gave people standards for determining whether an agreement had been fulfilled. A merchant did not have to rely entirely on personal trust when dealing with another person. The existence of enforceable rules reduced the risk of entering agreements with strangers. The fact most disputes are resolved without the state does not mean that they are useless. The very existence of a legal system is insurance that anyone can invoke at any time, so it's unnecessary to escalate a dispute if we already know its result.
As societies grow in complexity from villages to metropolis and sprawling cities and nations, trust becomes more important. In a small village where everyone knows each other, reputation can enforce many agreements. I know Jim is a cheater, so I can choose not to associate or trade with him. But the larger the society, the harder association and reputation are to use, and the more trust is important because most people interacting are strangers. The anarchists method of exile and discoation are much harder in sprawling cities of hundreds of thousands where it so much more difficult for that collective action to apply to one person or educate the whole city not to trade with that guy or all those guys.
This is why the cradles of civilizations Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China developed complex bureaucratic systems of law. Their legacies exist to this day whether it be english common law or the legacy of legalism and confucnism on chinese and east asian law.
(also States were and are fantastic for humans. Public works infastructure social order and stability innovation stable logistics trade and regional reputation and social trust are all invitations owed to states. Our population growth wealth and prosperity of a people is tied to the sucess of leadership and the sophistication within states.)
If there is one point I am trying to argue here, it's that society needs some form of binding law to function and having the binding ability to coerce a body of people under its representative authority is the definition of state. If you disagree with my conclusion, please say as such because i am curious to hear from an anarchist perspective if i am wrong, what assumptions i made, ect. I feel i need to have trust with people to be confident in trade, and to have trust, i need to feel that there is a benevolent authority that will side with me if my rights are violated.