The Exact Moment I Became an 'Anarchist'

It was in a parking lot…

(I have discussed this in bits and pieces—brief mentions in posts and comments—but I think I ought to make a proper post on the subject. I would like to document it, and to have something to which I can link back as needed.)

Obviously a sea change in ideology or philosophy does not occur in a single moment. For me, the process took place over a variety of timelines…

The first of these timelines is my entire life. I have been thinking about politics since I was little. I was raised in a political (and very left-wing) household, and that—plus an analytical and philosophical turn of mind—had me forever contemplating the question: What is best? What political system, ideology, philosophy will serve the good?

The second timeline is the period after 2000, when I went from thinking about politics to actively working in the field: as a researcher on political documentaries; consulting for a think tank; managing two political news and opinion sites; launching a couple of activist endeavors; serving on the board of a political organization; volunteering; and more. This was the time during which I moved into the mainstream conservative camp and involved myself in the war of ideas that characterized the first few years of the 21st century.

Simply joining Team Red and passively downloading its ideological software package did not sit well with me, however. The third timeline was the period during which I began reverse engineering that package in order to grok its underlying principles.

Most importantly, I began writing a book, and over the course of 15 years of intermittent work, along with lots of introspection and study, I found most of what I was looking for. By the end of the primary writing process, I considered myself, for lack of a better term, a minarchist.

All of this was not fickle flibbertigibbet-ing from one ideology to another. The process made sense: realizing the flaws in the ideology with which I was programmed as a child, joining the other ‘team,’ and then doing a deep dive into that team’s first principles all led me to the brink of an inescapable conclusion.

All that remained was to let go of that little piece of flotsam to which we all cling—the belief that the state is necessary and inevitable…and that if it went away, we’d all be clubbing each other for squirrel meat within five minutes.

If I start trying to lay out all the ideological conclusions along the way, this post would become its own book. However, I do need to speak of one that ended up being vital to the process…

While writing the book, I became fascinated by the slave-contract dilemma: ethically speaking, can a person willingly sign a contract promising to be another person’s slave for life? Not all edge-case questions are worth worrying about, but this one seemed to be.

I kept coming back to the conclusion that such a person could willingly choose to play the role of a slave, and could even do so for life, but that he would have to be let out of the arrangement if he wished…even if there were no such escape clause in the contract. A contract that one party can suddenly and unilaterally ignore is no contract at all, but I kept coming back to the same conclusion nonetheless.

Then, one sunny day, Murray Rothbard solved the problem in a sentence or two. (The Ethics of Liberty? A Libertarian Manifesto? I do not recall now.) In essence, he noted that contracts deal in alienable property, but a slave ‘contract’ would require that one surrender one’s self-ownership, which is inalienable.

This means that something roughly akin to my intuitive conclusion must be true: Yes, a person can choose to play the role of a slave, but he cannot be held to that choice, because doing so would violate his self-ownership.

That solved the dilemma (to my satisfaction, at least), and by all rights, that should have been the moment…but it wasn’t. I still had a couple of fingers on that piece of flotsam.

The fourth and final period was the (roughly) six months after I finished writing the book. I had acknowledged, in a late round of edits, that the vision of the social contract espoused by our Founders and Enlightenment era philosophers could not possibly be correct. Consent cannot be “tacit” or “implied” if the word consent is to have any real meaning. This, and every other thought I had accumulated over the years, continued to swirl in my head.

Then it happened…

I had frequently heard people singing the praises of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, so I decided it was time. Sometime in the summer of 2022, I got an audiobook version of Democracy: The God That Failed and began listening in my car.

His thorough shredding of democracy certainly primed the pump—opening me to the idea that the problems with democratic systems are inherent, and thus not fixable. But the actual ‘moment’ was sparked by something that, at first blush, might seem comparatively tame: a footnote with a quote from Ernst Cassirer:

14 The contract theory of the state here criticized originated with Thomas Hobbes and his works De Cive (chaps. 5-7) and Leviathan (chaps. 17-19). Hobbes there claimed that the legal bond between the ruler and the subjects, once it has been tied, is indissoluble. However, notes Cassirer,

most influential writers on politics in the seventeenth century rejected the conclusions drawn by Hobbes. They charged the great logician with a contradiction in terms. If a man could give up his personality [i.e., his right to self-ownership] he would cease being a moral being. He would become a lifeless thing-and how could such a thing obligate itself—how could it make a promise or enter into a social contract? This fundamental right, the right to personality, includes in a sense all the others. To maintain and to develop his personality is a universal right. It is not subject to the freaks and fancies of single individuals and cannot, therefore, be transferred from one individual to another. The contract of rulership which is the legal basis of all civil powers has, therefore, its inherent limits. There is no pactum subjectionis, no act of submission by which man can give up the state of a free agent and enslave himself. For by such an act of renunciation he would give up that very character which constitutes his nature and essence: he would lose his humanity. (The Myth of the State, p.195)¹

I was sitting in my car, in a parking lot, waiting to pick up my 16-year-old from work. I heard that quote. I rewound and listened to it again. Then I turned off the audiobook and stared into space while it beat in my brain.

If a man could give up his personality [i.e., his right to self-ownership] he would cease being a moral being…

He would become a lifeless thing…

How could such a thing obligate itself—how could it make a promise or enter into a social contract?

There is…no act of submission by which man can give up the state of a free agent and enslave himself.

By such an act of renunciation he would give up that very character which constitutes his nature and essence: he would lose his humanity.

The last few pieces of a giant puzzle—a puzzle I had been putting together for many years—slammed into place.

Slavery isn’t just dehumanizing in some metaphorical or poetic sense; it is literally dehumanizing. It violates the very thing—self-ownership—that makes each individual a unique and sovereign human person. It attempts to alienate the inalienable. It cannot, so all that remains is force, subjugation, and submission to avoid punishment.

Here were Hoppe and Cassirer pointing out that the ‘social contract’—even one imposed by the most democratic government—suffers from the same fatal flaw. It isn’t actually consensual, and thus violates self-ownership.

How did I not see it sooner? All the groundwork was there. That final realization was just waiting to get through my thick head.

Still, I didn’t run straight home and tell my wife, “Guess what, honey—I am an anarchist!” I had to be sure first.

I spent the ensuing weeks doing the philosophical math. I combined years of revelations with this final piece of the puzzle to produce a set of conclusions (which I later summarized here). And now, I am substantially satisfied that these conclusions are true.

Morally speaking,

1. Involuntary governance is impermissible.

2. This is so even if you claim the existence of a ‘social contract’ and tell people they consented to it.

3. People must be free to secede from any such arrangement, just as they would be free to say no to any slave contract.

The word ‘anarchy’ is fraught with baggage, and I still sometimes find it hard to use. But these conclusions seemed inescapable to me, and so that moment did finally come when, standing in the kitchen, I said,

Honey…I think I am an anarchist now.

So tell me—what do I have to do to convince you that you are too?

Feel free to download this image and read it at your leisure:

(Chart updated March ‘24)

1. Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. Democracy: The God That Failed: The Economics & Politics of Monarchy, Democracy & Natural Order. pg. 227