[Editor’s note: The Mises Institute presents below’s “voluntaryist constitution” as a thought experiment, and is not presented here as an ideological or political ideal.] There have been a number of attempts to create the ideal constitution – one which enshrines liberty, autonomy, and property rights, while ensuring the highest degree of prosperity for those under its jurisdiction. Each attempt to do so, however, has been plagued by a seemingly indomitable problem: constitutions create governments. Once the malicious genie of government has sprung forth from its lamp, it seems no constitutional structure or language is capable of subduing it.
Some may assert in response that this is simply an inherent problem with Constitution-making in general, and that an anarchic libertarian society would need no such document to thrive. However, even the veritable father of anarcho-capitalism, Murray Rothbard, disagreed:
Politically, the [Benjamin] Tucker anarchists had two principal defects: (1) they failed to advocate defense of private landholdings beyond what the owner used personally; (2) they relied too heavily on juries and failed to see the necessity for a body of constitutional libertarian law which the private courts would have to uphold.
These “right-wing” anarchists did not take the foolish position that crime would disappear in the anarchist society. Yet they did tend to underestimate the crime problem, and as a result never recognized the need for a fixed libertarian constitution. Without such a constitution, the private judicial process might become truly “anarchic” in the popular sense.
This post was published at Ludwig von Mises Institute on Oct 23, 2017.
Follow on Twitter
Recent Comments