Children Are Successful Anarchists

Rules without rulers…

In a breakout session at FreedomFest last week, I announced—almost like I was in a support group—that I had finally taken those last few steps across the bridge that spans the canyon between minarchist and anarchist. The panelists raised fists in solidarity and welcomed me aboard (stopping just short of actually saying “One of us, gooble-gobble”). It was tongue in cheek, of course, but also very serious. There are so few people who have found their way to these crystal-clear shores, and it is always a good feeling to welcome another.

Then the moderator told a joke:

What’s the difference between a minarchist and an anarchist?
About six months.

I have to say—that sounds about right. When I finished writing my book, I was definitely a minarchist, and just a few months after that, the last tumbler moved, the lock clicked, and the door opened to a whole new world. Not a world of Hobbesian chaos—a world in which there are rules without rulers.

Rules without rulers. Somehow I had managed to miss that simple, clear definition of libertarian anarchism, until I began reading Max Borders’ excellent book Underthrow: How Jefferson's Dangerous Idea Will Spark a New Revolution (in which it first appears on page xviii). I am only partway through, and already I find it echoing—and in some cases clarifying—many of the same conclusions I have reached over the last year.

When I first saw Borders’ use of the phrase, everything I have heard Jordan Peterson say about children and play—including his enlightening citations of Piaget and Panksepp—suddenly came flooding back to me. Simply put…

Children successfully create rules without rulers all the time!

Children play games. They invent games. Invented games need rules, so they invent rules. The process of inventing the rules is essential to their psycho-social development (and in many cases, is almost as much fun as playing the game itself). Then they follow the rules. They want to follow the rules, because they want to play the game.

If someone does not follow the rules, the rest of the group will likely deploy one of a few common strategies:

1. They can use opprobrium, stigma, or rational arguments to convince the rule-breaker that it is better to follow the rules they all agreed to at the start of the game.

2. They can initiate a discussion about whether or not there might have been a flaw in the rules. If the rules are sound, then the rule-breaker is further shown to have been out of line. If the rules are not sound, it leads to the creation of better rules. This produces an agreed, voluntary improvement in the social structure of the group.

3. If agreement is not reached, then one or more children may withdraw consent—walk away and start a new game.

In all cases, these are peaceful, voluntary mechanisms. Tempers occasionally flare: Jim might push Dan because Dan broke the rules, and this can be seen as a breakdown in the peace of the group. But such reactions are less common, and the same mechanisms of stigma, ostracism, and opprobrium tend to regulate this behavior and restore a condition of peaceful, voluntary order to the group.

Children are doing this every day, across the globe. You probably remember doing it yourself.

Is this proof that a broader social system of voluntary order will work? No. But it is definitely evidence, rooted in natural reality, that human beings have the capacity for it.

Out of the mouths of babes…

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