Why It Isn't Minarchism

Libertarians claim that Minarchism is the same political system as laissez-faire Capitalism. It is not. To understand what libertarians mean when they advocate for Minarchism, it is important to consider their perspective on how it compares to Statism and Anarchism, and how the size of government factors into it. This is how they see it:

The diagram shows a spectrum based on government size. On one end is statism—large government—while the other end represents anarchism, where no government exists. Minarchism, sits between these two, suggesting a government whose size should be reduced, but not entirely abolished.

That is the libertarian vision. The size of government is libertarian’s key consideration for distinguishing between these three social arrangements.

Note: Libertarians distinguish between anarchism and what they call “anarcho-capitalism” (not shown in the diagram). This misnomer is an oxymoron. It should be called anarcho-socialism.

Since reducing the size of government is the underlying mechanism, libertarians consider minarchism a step toward anarchism. They are then divided into two broad camps: one camp argues for going all the way toward anarchism, while the other stops at minarchism. Although this second camp concedes anarchism to be a desirable state, it considers it utopian, as people are somehow not yet ready for it. The second camp desires minarchism as much as a trip to the dentist.

With this conception, the min prefix chosen by the libertarians must be understood as minimizing government. But how small should it be? Libertarians do not specify a guiding principle for this. The Objectivist philosopher Harry Binswanger critiques the libertarian concept of minarchism in this way: [HB Letter #46425]

Suppose you had a government that only did one thing: on Tuesdays, it would shoot a random person. Would that be “minarchism”?

Via the size gradient, minarchism subtly promotes anarchism as desirable in principle. It also drags with it libertarian figures such as Hayek, Rothbard, and Hoppe, whose philosophical theories are in direct conflict with Objectivism. Hayek denies the capacity of reason and argues that rights are collectivist in nature. Rothbard explicitly advocates anarchism, while Hoppe bases his theory of property rights on the concept of scarcity and denies the legitimacy of intellectual property.

In contrast, Objectivism (Ayn Rand’s philosophical theory) holds that reason has no limits in dealing with reality and is the source of individual rights. It champions individualism and grounds its theory in rational selfishness. Objectivism also asserts that scarcity is temporary and is eliminated through ingenuity, while intellectual property is the most important form of property, as it is closest to the mind.

This is how Objectivists position the ideal political system of laissez-faire Capitalism in relation to Anarchism and Statism:

Notice that the size of government is not a factor in the Objectivist conception. The government will be the size required to protect individual rights. Mathematically speaking, the size will be what is necessary and sufficient to enable the government to fulfill its responsibility.

Also, in contrast to the libertarian view—in which anarchism is at the end of the arrow and interpreted by them as the direction of improvement—Objectivists place anarchism at the absolute worst end, with dictatorship and theocracy positioned right next to it. Under anarchism, there is no protection of individual rights.

Comparing these diagrams, it becomes obvious that the libertarian conception of what a free country is, is wrong. But is it a naive mistake? It gets worse; it is a deliberate anti-concept. Harry Binswanger writes in the same post:

“Minarchism” is an anti-concept. It is designed to destroy the term “capitalism.” Capitalism is not “the minimum amount of government,” it is “the proper function of government: the protection of individual rights through the placing of retaliatory force under objective control.” That doesn’t specify a quantity.

Thus, the real motive behind the term “minarchism” is to avoid using the precise and well-established concept of “capitalism.” In her work The Virtue of Selfishness (p. 42), Ayn Rand reminds us that Capitalism was the original American system:

I will say only that every political system is based on and derived from a theory of ethics—and that the Objectivist ethics is the moral base needed by that politico-economic system which, today, is being destroyed all over the world, destroyed precisely for lack of a moral, philosophical defense and validation: the original American system, Capitalism. If it perishes, it will perish by default, undiscovered and unidentified: no other subject has ever been hidden by so many distortions, misconceptions and misrepresentations. Today, few people know what capitalism is, how it works and what was its actual history.

What is an anti-concept? Ayn Rand observed that some concepts people coin serve no value except to intentionally or evasively obscure an existing concept. She described this practice as forming an anti-concept. She writes in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 176,

Observe the technique involved . . . . It consists of creating an artificial, unnecessary, and (rationally) unusable term, designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concepts—a term which sounds like a concept, but stands for a “package-deal” of disparate, incongruous, contradictory elements taken out of any logical conceptual order or context, a “package-deal” whose (approximately) defining characteristic is always a non-essential. This last is the essence of the trick.

In this case, we have the concept of Capitalism already. Why not use it? As for the case of the anti-concept of “minarchism,” where is the package-deal that Ayn Rand mentions, and where is the non-essential? It is the size of government—the non-essential—when discussing freedom and protection of rights. This non-essential is packaged with the important things that make a country free, such as the freedom of speech, and the overall package becomes the defining characteristic.

Despite capitalism’s undeniable success in lifting billions out of poverty, it faces widespread opposition. The public hates it and is bending over backward to come up with some variant that it finds palatable. Minarchism is one of them; here are a few others, depending on who you talk to: mixed economy (Democrats), capitalism with a human face (leftists), responsible capitalism (woke), the Zeitgeist movement (college students), a new world order (conspiracy theorists), a network state (crypto enthusiasts), and MAGA (conservatives).

Why the hate? It’s because capitalism is incompatible with altruism, yet people are taught, from kindergarten onward, that altruism is good and selfishness is evil. But what is altruism, anyway? It’s when one person does things for others that are not in his self-interest. Imagine a child playing with a toy, fully focused and engaged, learning. An adult caretaker comes along and forces him to share the toy with another child. The whole idea of “socializing” a child is about making him fit in with others and do what others want.

The result of this kind of upbringing was demonstrated by the Asch Conformity Experiments [wikipedia], in which subjects had to match lines of different lengths. It was shown that 75% of subjects were willing to evade reality at least once, in order to conform to the majority opinion; 5% always evaded it, and 25% never did. If this was the case for a blatantly obvious test, how would it play out in a real-life scenario, where one’s independent decision must weigh many factors and the right decision is not obvious? It is not surprising, then, that all countries in the world are collectivist societies, in which the desires of the group supersede the desires of the individual. Even Spock said it.

Conformism and collectivism are manifestations of the broader principle of altruism. People consider it legitimate to both sacrifice themselves for others and to expect others to sacrifice for them. Their relationships are tallied based on who owes more inconvenience to whom. For example: “I will attend your boring event, so now you have to attend my boring event.” Ayn Rand called this moral cannibalism. She writes (The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 38):

The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another. Today, most people hold this premise as an absolute not to be questioned.

Altruists believe that for several people to be happy, what is necessary is a pairwise, bilateral sacrifice from one person to another, repeated until enough happiness is accumulated. And what do they think about “selfishness”? They see it as a unilateral sacrifice, which they deem unfair, believing it serves the self-interest of the receiving side. Ayn Rand continues to explain this invalid view of selfishness:

And when one speaks of man’s right to exist for his own sake, for his own rational self-interest, most people assume automatically that this means his right to sacrifice others. Such an assumption is a confession of their own belief that to injure, enslave, rob or murder others is in man’s self-interest—which he must selflessly renounce. The idea that man’s self-interest can be served only by a non-sacrificial relationship with others has never occurred to those humanitarian apostles of unselfishness, who proclaim their desire to achieve the brotherhood of men. And it will not occur to them, or to anyone, so long as the concept “rational” is omitted from the context of “values,” “desires,” “self-interest” and ethics.

This reiterates why a proper, matching philosophy is needed as the foundation for capitalism. It must be the kind that justifies selfishness, because capitalism is compatible with selfishness but is incompatible with altruism. That philosophy is Objectivism, which is why Anthemism advocates for it as the foundation of a new state.

Note that despite misguided attempts to find variants of Capitalism, there is only one kind of Capitalism, the laissez-faire kind. This French term literally translates as “let do” or “let make,” and in context, it means “let people do things without interference.” Any attempt to evade this would go against the core principle of Capitalism: a system that protects individual rights. Ayn Rand continues to clarify (The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 42):

When I say “capitalism,” I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism—with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. A pure system of capitalism has never yet existed, not even in America; various degrees of government control had been undercutting and distorting it from the start. Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the future—if mankind is to have a future.

Note: Capitalism is not merely an economic system, as many intellectuals mistakenly claim when they define it as simply a system where the means of production are privately owned. It is a moral system—a system designed to protect individual rights.

While libertarians focus on minimizing government, Objectivists see it as essential for protecting individual rights. Libertarians view government as inherently evil, with minarchists considering it a necessary evil. In contrast, Objectivists regard government as a necessary good. It follows that if you view an institution as evil, you won’t have respect for it, and such a system cannot remain stable in the long run.

Antonin Scalia, a late U.S. Supreme Court Justice known for his originalist interpretation of the Constitution, emphasized that simply writing down the rules is not enough to effectively protect rights. In a 2011 speech before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, he made the following point:

I tell [the law students], if you think that a bill of rights is what sets us [Americans] apart, you’re crazy. Every banana republic in the world has a bill of rights. Every President for life has a bill of rights. The bill of rights of the former “Evil Empire,” the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours. … They guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of street demonstrations and protests; and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. …

Of course — [these are] just words on paper, what our Framers would have called a parchment guarantee. And the reason is, that the real Constitution of the Soviet Union … did not prevent the centralization of power, in one person or in one party. And when that happens the game is over; the Bill of Rights is just what our Framers would call a parchment guarantee.

So, the real key to the distinctiveness of America is the structure of our government. … [Unless] Americans can appreciate that and learn to love the separation of powers, which means learning to love the gridlock, which the Framers believed would be the main protection of minorities … . If a bill is about to pass that really comes down hard on some minority [and parts of government] think it’s terribly unfair, it doesn’t take much to throw a monkey wrench into this complex system.

Scalia is right that the structure of government is crucial for making rules effective. However, it is equally important that those in power hold a philosophical view that compels them to enforce these rules. If government leaders subscribe to libertarian philosophy, they will not be focused on defending individual rights. Instead, they will advocate for smaller government and promote ideas from libertarian thinkers, such as Hayek’s endorsement of a collectivist justification for rights based on tradition, as well as the rejection of reason as a foundation for justifying individual rights.

Just as in the USSR, when a flawed philosophy takes hold of those in power, the state will not protect individual rights but will actively work against them. A society without the right philosophical foundation will inevitably slide toward statism. A libertarian minarchist state, rooted in the philosophy of libertarians, is doomed to fail when confronted with the first complex issue. Thus, it is not surprising that all libertarian projects–from the Republic of Minerva and Vanuatu to Prospera–have failed. The only way to establish a truly free and lasting society is to adopt the laissez-faire Capitalist system, grounded in Objectivism.

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