The NYTimes has a fascinating article about the obstacles confronting those who seek to establish a new government in Somalia. There have been several debates on this blog about the nature of anarchy as it currently exists in Somalia, and whether the country would be much better off than it is now if some sort of state governed it. The establishment of said state, though, is much easier said than done.
The current efforts to create a government have run up against the much older system of clan relations that govern Somalian civil society. If Somalia truly is better off with a state, that state will somehow have to be imposed over an already existing societal structure that is already deeply suspicious of the current efforts to form a government. Whether anarchy is good or absolutely terrible, Somalian civil society already has a definite structure provided by the clan system. There seem to be some very difficult questions here about how to impose a state that people supposedly need desperately onto individuals who don’t trust it and fear it will disrupt an already existing way of life. Whatever one thinks of the current anarchy, it seems that the formation of a government is not going to instantly bring peace and stability to Somalia, and that the state may end up in constant conflict with the very society it seeks to stabilize.
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/6171/somalia-society-vs-the-state/
Somalia: Society vs. the State?
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The fact is that such a state would require the protection of armed thughs (with euphemistic humor called “soldiers”) to keep itself viable. If this force is unable to disarm and control the population, even with the threat of massacre, then such government cannot last. If the decision for Somalis is to have either an oppresive, foreign-supported government or many tribe clans (some oppresive, some not), the choice will be known once people start voting with bullets.
I’m a bit puzzled. Is the Somalis clan system really a form of anarchy, or is it just a more decentralized form of government?
I would say a more decentralized form of government:
I believe (and I could be wrong on this) that Clans own land, not individuals.
So, each clan is a ministate, headed by the clan leaders, which exerts totalitarian control over its little patches of ground. Since a person is represented by the clans they are born into (or marry into), and the clan provides security services, there is little chance to shop around for security services. A person can’t be born into Clan A, decide they get better treatment in Clan B, join it, then hire Clanand fire B, then return to A when A offers them a better deal.
The freedom to hire and fire security services is absent in Somalia. I believe this freedom is a fundamental requirement of any anarchy. When it is lacking, you have one or more states.
Isn’t that a case of tough luck? I’m sure we have heard the term ‘safety in numbers’. Without some sort of order in a group of people, all you get are a heap of hermits walking around ocassionally clunking heads. The trade-off between ‘safety in numbers with some sort of hierarchy to ensure meaningful production and protection from the evils of the outside world’ and ‘being a self-sufficient hermit who lives all on his/her own but has complete and total freedom’ is ultimately what must separate why some people prefer to choose Anarchism or to choose Statism.
Sam, why do you keep bringing up absurdities? Anarchism does not mean self-sufficient hermits–it means people–even large numbers of people–working cooperatively and competitively in voluntary situations, not coercively or in some coercive environment or backdrop as most governments provide. Hayek showed how large numbers of people can coordinate their activities in a decentralized fashion with his concept of spontaneous order. That’s hardly a bunch of Robinson Crusoes all being islands unto themselves.
You can’t serious believe, M. Clem, that large populations are going to be as peaceful as small populations? Hasn’t it always been that small tribes and villages are more peaceful than cities and nations? Isn’t it because the small population are interdependent? That to cheat or steal from one member has a quick detrimental effect on the whole population? On the other hand, large societies can absorb the effect of members who fall prey to crime. If someone gets robbed, bashed, killed, etc., society keeps turning as if nothing happened. Due to the lack of this interdepedence is why large population can’t/won’t peacefully co-exist. The social cost part is small and usually doesn’t affect the perpretrator hence someone with criminal intent usually sees only profit with the possible exception of the victim to defend themselves. Isn’t coincidental that small tribes and village tend to have quaint, true, Direct Democracy and large societies always keep tending towards Dictatorship, especially a Military Dictatorship?
Finally it’s also interesting that when Prime Minister Magaret Thatcher announced her plan to dismantle Britain’s Welfare State, she said that ‘there’s no such thing as Society, only individuals and families’. Hence for plenty of people ‘Society’ and ‘State’ are one and the same.
You can’t serious believe, M. Clem, that large populations are going to be as peaceful as small populations?
Percentage-wise, yes. Large cities are indeed different from small towns in some ways, but large cities are still made up of individuals and families, which make up neighborhoods, which make up the cities. Many of the problems in the larger cities are a direct result of government regulation and interference, such as zoning laws, road layout, building codes, utility monopolies, etc., which are either not as prevalent in smaller communities or are easier to deal with. Naturally, without top-down government, cities would grow and develop in different ways than they historically have.
But this misses my main point, which is simply that large-scale production is easily coordinated by a market system unhampered by government regulation and interference.
Sam does have a point with respect to big states having access to a greater tax and conscription take, thus making it more practicable for such states to be aggressive, and those kind of states tolerating more small-scale crime than smaller ones, thus making the populace in them more edgy and thus more prone to the blandishments of war.
In fact, war could be seen as one of the more august quick fixes for a rampup in crime. As Rudyard Kipling noted, Tommy the brute becomes a valued man indeed once he joins the “‘thin red line of heroes’ when the guns beging to shoot.”
Michael,
“Anarchism…means people–even large numbers of people–working cooperatively and competitively in voluntary situations, not coercively or in some coercive environment or backdrop as most governments provide.”
This model breaks down the minute you and your neighbor disagree on whether your construction activities are increasing groundwater runoff to his property. If you can’t resolve the matter by agreement, then the issue becomes which of you can hire the biggest, baddest protection agency, or you both agree to a social contract that recognizes the rule of law. In the latter case, the individual is no longer an autonomous political unit. This is why the anarchist, to be true to his creed, must be a perpetual leveller of organic society.
Is it at all possible for a group of anarchists to move to Somalia and create a place to live and prosper?
Reactionary, that’s not true. In anarchism, people who quarrel can agree to hire a neutral mediator (i.e. a “judge”) to resolve a dispute. That’s cheaper than fighting.
Why I would prefer an anarchistic society, I just don’t see it working over the long run. Unfortunately, there are those people who simply crave power and will ultimately form associations with like minded people to physically dominate other people. The state will simply arise, just as it did in primitive days. Anarchism suffers from the fatal flaw of assuming that people will be willing to let go of having dominion over other people. Lust for power will doom any efforts at anarchism.
M. Seiler,
Okay. So the neutral determines that your construction activities are increasing groundwater runoff and you must either pay your neighbor $100,000 or cease the activities. Impossible!, you say. Tough toenails, say the neutral and your neighbor. Pay up or the local warlord, excuse me, Private Defense and Protection Agency, starts seizing your assets.
Now what? You either acquiesce under this threat of force or you resist and whoever can muster the biggest private army wins. The anarchist’s voluntary society will always be a utopia.
Some of you seem determined to believe the worst in people. You believe that without government, people would simply group together and whoever has the most force wins.
While by no means do I believe that there wouldn’t be conflicts and some people wouldn’t still be willing to commit crimes against their fellow man, there are a couple of things you’re overlooking.
Conflict and conflict-resolution. Government legislation and regulation often creates conflicts that are resolved unfairly. Neighbors will be less likely to run into conflict if, under a common or customary legal system, they know in advance how construction activities will be perceived and how previous conflicts have been resolved. If they still come into conflict, third party arbitration and mediation will work as well or better than government courts that are required to interpret legislation instead of previous precedents (or try to force precedent to fit legislation). People likely to resolve conflicts violently under anarchism are just as likely to do so under the current system.
Secondly, under government legislation, some people have a legal right to acquire power over other people: politicians, law-enforcement, companies that influence politicians, etc. Without the umbrella of government, all attempts to seize power over other people will be, and will be considered, illegitimate and criminal. Thus, the “tipping point” for doing so is changed.
I’m not going to say that anarchism will usher in a new utopia for mankind or anything grandiose like that, but it’s certainly as feasible if not more so than what we have now.
it’s interesting that American media don’t or won’t recognize Somaliland or Puntland as successor states emerging from the break up of Somalia.
Michael,
“You believe that without government, people would simply group together and whoever has the most force wins.”
That’s what people do: group together. And any time you have a group you are going to have conflict. And if you have conflict, you need a mechanism for its resolution. And a PDA that can’t assure its judgment won’t simply be undercut by a more powerful or wealthier PDA has nothing of value to offer. So people will coalesce into relatively homogenous groups and grant a monopoly on offensive force under the rubric of the law to a single PDA. Fortunately, since the regime of compulsory association will at last be overthrown, conflict will be minimized.
Neo-feudalism, in other words, and when the social democracies have finally run their course and collapsed, remember: you heard it here first. And it is coming whether you like it or not.
Individualist anarchists who want to march to their own drummer will have to content themselves with banditry or beggary in the uninhabited areas between the private city-states. Until some influential mercantile family decides a mixed-use development would look good in that spot, that is.
Cheerful fellow, aren’t you? As long as you wish to believe the worst in people, you probably won’t be disappointed. But violent conflict is not cost-effective. Most people will (and do now) prefer to solve conflicts non-violently.
In anarchism, it’s not a matter of who has the most power to enforce judgements, but mostly a matter of making sure the parties involved actually want to resolve the conflict and that they agree upon the agency that will resolve it. Arbitration and mediation groups provide decisions on conflicts–that’s their service.
Assuming an anarchist society, those who refuse to abide by the arbitration might possibly suffer violent action, but more likely will suffer the loss of privileges in that society, proportional to the case involved. Loss of reputation, loss of credit, and other forms of ostracism can be surprisingly powerful, if general society wants and supports a peaceful and productive society.
If people are as innately evil as you seem to think, then one has to wonder how humanity has gotten as far as it has.
I don’t believe the worst in people. There are a lot of good people and people who at least try to be good.
But then we have the Hitlers, Mansons, Khan’s, Pol Pot’s, Idi Amin’s, ad nasuem. Many on the baddy list created empire almost on the force of their own personal will.
There are two things in this society that make me distrust anarchy. 1. The truly bad people. 2. The multitudes of indolent, ignorant people who blindly follow the bad people on the basis of some promise or some line of oratory.
Yes, there are quite a few good people. Sadly, many of them are too wrapped up watching American Idol to notice the bad people.
Mark Brabson, you must keep in mind that the government is an organization made up of people. There is no magical force that makes government officials better than the rest of us. In fact, government power attracts the worst kinds of people. Of the evil people you listed, all but Manson were government dictators. And Manson didn’t kill nearly as many people as the government dictators you listed.
If people are evil, government merely provides a quick and easy mechanism through which they can exercise their evil. I’m not saying that anarchy would end all evil. No system can do that. But in anarchy, evil acts would be much, much harder to carry out, especially on the scale of Hitlers, Stalins, and Maos.
Why do you jump to the conclusion that all conflict resolution will always end in violence?
It doesn’ happen with states, even among historical enemies, with great differences in armed might, peaceful international arbitration is the preferred choice. If Germany and Japan have a trade dispute, they both prefer to go to the WTO for arbitration, rather than start launching missiles, because both would lose if they did.
Why would it be different between civilised private neighbours?
In the above analogy, does the WTO have an army to force compliance? No, it relies on reciprocity and member sanctions, the ultimate being expulsion. PDAs and DROs would be similar.
With regards to land and Somalia-land sales are generally restricted to within the clan. Therefore, the clan does have territoriality. It is suggested by Bernard von Notten (author, the Law of the Somalis) that the concept of long term leasing to outsiders be the first way to end land restrictions.
Perhaps it is better to think of Somalia as a kritarchy (ruled by judges) than an anarchy
posted by Reactionary:
That’s what people do: group together. And any time you have a group you are going to have conflict. And if you have conflict, you need a mechanism for its resolution. And a PDA that can’t assure its judgment won’t simply be undercut by a more powerful or wealthier PDA has nothing of value to offer. So people will coalesce into relatively homogenous groups and grant a monopoly on offensive force under the rubric of the law to a single PDA. Fortunately, since the regime of compulsory association will at last be overthrown, conflict will be minimized.
Like any other private company, PDAs cannot exist without voluntary support. People do not always choose to support a given company based on the "obvious" benefits, such as in the case of a PDA the size and reach of its enforcement arm. It can be reasonably supposed, based on the way people choose to support or not support private companies now, that many factors would go into supporting or not supporting PDAs in an environment of private rights protection. This is reasonable to suppose because it happens now: there is more than MicroSoft software, more than Wal-Mart retail, etc. despite the size and power of those companies.
It is certainly possible, even likely, that there will be bad actors in the PDA market, as well as legitimate lapses of judgement or errors by PDAs and/or their clientele. But the idea that a society that would embrace PDAs as an alternative to the coercive powers of the state would also tend to support those PDAs which most closely mimicked the actions of the state via a "might makes right" business policy is hard to accept.
In modern society many companies which would otherwise be bankrupt exist on government subsidy. Take that away and only those companies which enjoy truly earned voluntary public support exist.
Pellinore
I support an anarchy based on free market institutions, just because I do not believe in those daydreams that support a state.
To believe that states will respect individual rights is surely unrealistic. It is like supporting that some individuals should have the right to do criminal acts and then hope that they won’t use those “rightsâ€. Mission impossible, I would say.
States will always have a tendency to misuse its powers.
Look at our monetary systems, it ended up with fiat money. It is no different with the law.
When states exist and are supported and handle the monetary system, people will believe that it is the states which are the creators of money and not that money is developed out of a commodity with a previously existing purchasing power.
It is the same with the law, when states handle justice, people will believe that justice is the creation of states and not principles based on reason.
In other words people get confused.
Someone wrote on this site, why should a thief stop stealing? My answer to this was morality and law.
A better question would be: why should states stop doing criminal acts? The “morality†is to support a state and states are not bound to follow the same laws as everyone else, so what will stop them? The answer is nothing.
The Austrian Economics Newsletter
Austrians and the Private-Property Society
An Interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe
AEN: Yet Mises attacks anarchism in no uncertain terms.
HOPPE: His targets here are left-utopians. He attacks their theory that man is good enough not to need an organized defense against the enemies of civilization. But this is not what the private-property anarchist believes. Of course, murderers and thieves exist. There needs to be an institution that keeps these people at bay. Mises calls this institution government, while people who want no state at all point out that all essential defensive services can be better performed by firms in the market. We can call these firms government if we want to.
http://mises.org/journals/aen/aen198.asp
Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden
Well, um, Björn Lundahl, I’d say for Anarchism to work it’d require an important criterion: that the average person would be reasonable, self-reliant, sensible, decent, all round honest but careful. Yet a great many folk here support Enlightened Monarchies over Representative Democracy because the average person is deemed to be too thick to be self-reliant, too daft for individual thinking and ultimately prone to herd behaviour. Hence the term ‘sheeple’. If so, then there’s no hope of Anarchy because sheeple need shepherds.
Interestingly, some like to brag about the claim that the 2nd Amendment gives individuals the right to own firearms then this would a good example of giving the individual a potent form of power and forever hope the masses don’t go aroung using that right foolishly.
But the rights of modern States exist because they are Representative Democracies and stem from the support of the masses and I’d doubt it’s going to change of its own accord. Of course, if enlightened folk see the all crapiness that the sheeple can’t then, of course, the solution is a coup d’etat.
P.S. I mean ‘self-reliant’ to be someone who takes care of himself without become dependent on someone else and not a hermit who grow his/her own food.
“Well, um, Björn Lundahl, I’d say for Anarchism to work it’d require an important criterion: that the average person would be reasonable, self-reliant, sensible, decent, all round honest but careful.â€
If man is that bad it is a good argument for not supporting a state. Evil people should not have the “right†to violate people’s rights.
The only man I would trust to stand above the law is Mr James Bond himself, but that is a very good man (with a license to kill).
Björn Lundahl
Further to my comments above, this discussion from today’s Mises blog has some interesting insights about the reality of commercial competition as opposed to the cataclysmic vision espoused by opponents of PDAs.
Example:
“When I think about positive competition– the competition of the free market– I simply look out the window while I drive and look at the businesses.
For example, I might notice the remarkable diversity of pizza restaurants. Some well-known nationally, some locally, some mom-and-pop shops. The remarkable thing about this competition is that they all stay in business and all of them make a profit for many years (some have been open for over 30). The owners are usually well rewarded. They employ hundreds of workers. The prices for large pizzas go from $5 to $25 at all different levels of quality (from 10 minutes or less to artisan made over a wood-fired brick oven). True, from time to time one pizza place closes its doors. Another will open in a few months down the street.
No one is out sabotaging the other business, no one is bad-mouthing the competitors in order to get the other’s customers. No one tries to become the sole pizza provider (or at least, no one is so successful that they can please every palate). The business owners and managers are not cigar-chomping, ruthless sharks. Who’d buy a pizza from that guy? It’s not dog-eat-dog, not survival of the fittest, and it’s not all sorts of other negative cliches.
when I think of the negative sort of competition, the kind of under-handed, dirty, winner-take-all… the only kind of competition that breeds that is the competition for political power.
truly, a new term is needed for the negative type of competition.”
Pellinore
I mean ‘self-reliant’ to be someone who takes care of himself without become dependent on someone else
Well, the best way to encourage independence is to not enable their dependencies. Public Education, Social Security, government welfare, etc. all contribute towards denying people the consequences of their actions. Some people may still fail, and fail miserably, but most people can learn from their mistakes and learn to truly be responsible for their actions. This is a matter of what is expected from them, and changing those expectations.
“Yet a great many folk here support Enlightened Monarchies over Representative Democracy because the average person is deemed to be too thick to be self-reliant,”
Where on Earth do you get that? You constantly come up with the most amazingly ill-informed ideas, friend Sam! Fact is, a number of folk here support monarchy over democracy because monarchy offers a greater chance of freedom in all respects – see “Democracy: The God That Failed”.
Well, Peter, reading Libertarian criticism, espcially Hoppe, gives me that idea. Monarchies are better because they are interested in the long term and are careful with their power, whereas politicians can’t see past the next election. Therefore Monarchs are less prone to creating welfare states, inposing taxes, printing paper money and going to war. On other hand, being brief occupants, politicians have all sorts of fun without picking up the tab.
Yet we, of course, have to see the other side of the Democratic ledger, namely for politicians to enact various Socialist trappings, there must millions of Socialist-loving citizens who clamour together for the great changeover. Perhaps the great power of Monarchs for capitalism is to round up Socialist revolutionaries and throw them into jail and set an example to any would-be professional thieves. Conversely a Democracy would allow Socialist thinking to spread and when enough people are captivated by it then it can be voted into existence. After all it had to be asked how when the vote given to the vast majority of the population how quickly the Welfare State emerge? Doesn’t that mean the average person on the street, who has never owned a business, can’t understand the Capitalist system? And if they can’t understand getting forced income from one area means imposed costs to elsewhere, how could society benefit from their votes?
Another trade-off could be Qualified-Democracy, which is to say to get the right to vote people have to have some qualification that they done something in society which shows they have understanding of the underlying workings of society. It’s interesting in the earlier days of Democracy the vote was only given to those who had a significant income, or land, or all-round net worth and politicians were also unpaid volunteers. Which all means that only people of significant wealth could have a say on the how society is run and guide its future. Since such people are obviously the well-off and rich Capitalists they’d be far more informed and understanding of economics than the person on the street.
If you’re interested, Sam, the name for such a “Qualified Democracy” is timocracy.
“1. a form of government in which love of honor is the dominant motive of the rulers.
“2. a form of government in which a certain amount of property is requisite as a qualification for office.”
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/timocracy
Oh thanks, D. Ryan, I never actually heard the term ‘Timocracy’ before (I’m pretty sure I only heard the concept referred to as a sorta-Democracy). But interestingly I’d say it’s by far the more interesting form of rule to be compatible with Libertarian values. I’m pretty sure in the early days of America this form of rule was the norm as the populance didn’t have enough to be taxed to allow for salaried politicians.
I am the only Somali here. Clans is just a social securtiy system. I am from the Isaaq Clan in the north. I can spit on the face of the clan leader if I want. Clan leader is just a choosen leader. I have th right to do anything i want as long as I am not hurting someone. Only if I hurt Someone, I can be taken to court. Other then that, I can have do whatever I want. Its free country. But Poor, becouse of bad management.
Thanks all of you, I am Somali and want take my share of the depate, actually Somalia is the only country in the world that the people share every thing: culture, religion, language, color and so on. the only problem that Somalis are suffering is the international Intervenion and Lack of Leadership. the International Community acts like Citizins of the country, the even ellect the president of Somalia indirectly. Somali people are really innocent people and if they get accountable government they can be the best people and somalia can be the best country.
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