No fear of words!

panarchy

Attorney Stephan Kinsella mentioned on July 10, 2005, in the blog of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in a post with the title

Polycentric Law

"'polycentric' law, or the idea that multiple forms of law can overlap within the same geographic area. Law need not be, and in fact is not, a monopoly within a specific geographic region."

But this interesting quote is not Steven Horwitz's, it is from a mysterious Tom that I was not able to elucidate (Tom Cruise? Tom Szasz? Tom Knapp? Tom Reeves? Tom Fuller? ...?) in spite of too much time spent on searching, and I do not want to spend the rest of my life with that search, just for the sake of journalistic one-upmanship maybe. So much for academic standards.

Anyway, you can read the interesting post of Steven Kinsella [with further missing references I could not find...; a professional idiosyncracy of lawyers, no doubt ;-)] and the discussion that ensued (35 comments so far). My only important concern here is to offer you two quotes of exceptional quality taken from those 35 comments, which should have a permanent place on this site, especially since they are signed by two eminent authorities, two indomitable panarchist ponies (sorry horses, but the alliteration was so nice) from this panarchist site's riding stable:

• John Zube:
  If anyone thinks that "anarcho-capitalism" (or any other term with essentially the same meaning) is or will be soon, if ever, the ideal for all people living in a territory, including all of Earth and other planets and other space habitats, then he makes the same basic mistake that the statists engage in whenever they imagine that their various forms and degrees of "sado-masochism" are or will soon be, if ever, the ideal of all somewhat moral and rational people. - I suggest the study of the history of personal law and exterritorial autonomy for voluntary communities - for all kinds of anarchists, libertarians and statists. See e.g. www.panarchism.info and www.panarchy.org - I for one favour full exterritorial autonomy for all voluntary communities, even those of our present opponents, or, using older terms, full minority autonomy or experimental freedom, quite independent of present & future territorial constitutions, laws, governments and jurisdictions. It begins by individual and group secessionism by people appreciating and wanting to uphold and realize at least some of their individual rights and liberties among themselves, at their own risk and expense, while granting the same right to all others. - No system is to be forced upon anyone - except aggressors against genuine basic rights and liberties. - John Zube, 11.7.05, for Libertarian Microfiche Publishing and libertarian and anarchist CDs, DVDs and external HDs, i.e. complete anarchist & libertarian reference collections.
• Richard C. B. Johnsson:
  As someone already has noted, anarchism means no rule, or no government. But what most libertarians of anarchist persuasion object to is the territorial monopoly on the use of force, not the government per se. Thus, anarchy doesn’t seem to be the best word to describe the anti-monopolist stance. There is a difference between being anti-monopoly and anti-government. This has nothing to do about tactics or strategy. And after all, as John Zube writes: “’Anarchy for ALL!’ - is also an authoritarian imposition.”

  Government without territorial monopoly? Yes, history is full of examples. In fact, it used to be the universal way of governance prior to the rise of the current monopolist governments and states. When it comes to the history of non-territorial governance and polycentric law, as well as the Ambassadorial privilege, the perhaps best source and, alas, the most overlooked one, is Shih Shun Liu’s ‘Extraterritoriality, Its Rise and Its Decline’(that I have helped putting on-line). Especially the first part is extremely interesting and relevant. I have also written a piece over at LRC referring to the Liu book, ‘‘To the Monopolists of All Parties’, as well as a longer review, ‘‘‘Non-Territorial Governance - Mankind's Forgotten Legacy’ for those of you that are interested.

  Personally, I prefer the term panarchy, meaning ‘all rules.’ (I also favor ‘non-territorial governance’ if I want to stress the territorial aspect.) Panarchists don’t deny that most people don’t want freedom at all but build their whole framework upon that fact – “To each the non-territorial government or non-governmental society of his/her choice.” (This might have both strategical and tactical dimensions, but I won’t go into that.)

But Richard C. B. Johnsson continues with two more comments, answering someone who writes under the handle averros:

Dear averros,
You are correct that the current system is "might makes it right". But whatever we might think of the term panarchy, I’m not so sure why “well-defined limits to justifable application of violence” are “rejected by the panarchy”. If people would be allowed to have the full political freedom of choosing and having the government (or none) they like, implying individual secession together with as much economic freedom they like, why would this imply that there would be no “well-defined limits to justifable application of violence”? Who would want to enter into such panarchies? Not many, nor very similar to the current system where you are forced into such a situation. As for violence against other non-members, you would have a better armed populace and private militias – again, not very similar to the current system with its territorial monopoly on force. For conflict solving between members of different panarchies, you’d have things like arbitration, mixed courts, the ancient “actor sequitur forum rei” principle – again, hardly lack of principles, so typical of the current system. I hope I didn’t misinterpret your post. If so, please let me know in what way.

And:

Dear averros, you write that some panarchies “may actually condone doing violence to non-members of the group” and turn this into an argument against panarchy. Panarchy won’t turn violent people into peaceful ones, sure. But that is hardly unique to panarchy, is it? Individuals and groups of people being aggressive towards others are of course criminals.

Moreover, you seem to assume that all “believers into social-democratic, theocratic and other collectivist doctrines” are aggressive. That is plainly wrong. I’ve lived my entire life in social-democratic Sweden and can’t say that people are aggressive. It is a rather peaceful place.

Of course, they rely on the territorial monopoly in order to make some of their come through. But it would be wrong to assume that all of them do this because they want to be bad to you. Many of them simply want to live their way of life, just like you and me. It is the monopoly that forces everybody to impose their will on others in order to be able to live their way.

It would be wrong to assume that because social-democrats have ruled in Sweden for a long time, the majority of Swedes or social-democrats have a situation where their dreams have come true. In the last election, the current government was supported by as little as 31% of the electorate and 42% of actual votes. This means that neither the majority or the social-democrats themselves can have their will come through, but have to rely on others. None is happy as things are. None want the will of others imposed on them.

Finally, it seems wrong to me to dismiss panarchy on the grounds of straw man arguments. I beg you not to, and why not check out a book on the topic?

Don't limit yourself to the above though, read the full discussion on the Mises site, as it deals with basics and terminology and the fear of words. It's more with words that battles are won than with principles. Power uses words to hide wrong and bad structures or principles, we the powerless (in the sense of lack of bad intentions and actions) have better principles but maybe not yet the words that could make us win. We have the power though of intelligence and morals and deeper insights than the lazy majority. The ongoing terminology battles, as interesting and surely somehow enlightening as they are, make the Power grin that we are divided and thus easier to rule. Let's at least secede as much as we already can, not only from government, but also from those libertarians that cannot be weaned of territorial, nationalist or other statist and collectivist addictions.

In this discussion it struck me again that in such forums there are always two groups: those who appear under their real name and those who feel compelled to use a handle like the ones you might want to use in an AOL chat room... The higher the level of the place, like here, the more you have real names (11 here versus 5 of the other kind). There are enough libertarian fora where you practically have only handles, people with no faces, only avatars. I hate that and doubt whether with that anonymitry we will ever gain respectability and widespread acceptance of our agenda.

Here are the important links:

• www.panarchism.info
• www.panarchy.org
• Qua lege vivis? To the Monopolists of All Parties