Diary
Is libertarianism child-like, naïve, utopian? Tolstoy sweeps aside a common argument
by Arthur Stromboli on Aug.22, 2009, under Diary
Every Saturday morning Keene libertarians call-in to a local radio show put on by Keene government officials. Regular co-host Fred Parsells is often found saying that libertarianism is a Mary Poppins utopia and all who admire and defend libertarianism are child-like, naïve and idealistic.
Now, there are many variations of this argument, but what it essentially boils down to is the notion that libertarians just haven't grown-up yet, but when they get old and wise like Parsells they will then see the error of their ways. In the wisdom that only comes with age, they will learn to be at peace with the world and cast aside their radical ideas to change it.
Leo Tolstoy was a man who first became a radical anarchist in the fifth decade of his life. He also anticipated the popular cliché repeated by Parsells on the radio. Tolstoy devoted a couple of pages in his book The Kingdom of God is Within You and does a marvelous job turning Parsell's ad hominem on it's head:
"We may dispute upon the question whether the nestlings are ready to do without the mother-hen and to come out of the eggs, or whether they are not yet advanced enough. But the young birds will decide the question without any regard for our arguments when they find themselves cramped for space in the eggs. Then they will begin to try them with their beaks and come out of them of their own accord.
It is the same with the question whether the time has come to do away with the governmental type of society and to replace it by a new type. If a man, through the growth of a higher conscience, can no longer comply with the demands of government, he finds himself cramped by it and at the same time no longer needs its protection. When this comes to pass, the question whether men are ready to discard the governmental type is solved. And the conclusion will be as final for them as for the young birds hatched out of the eggs. Just as no power in the world can put them back into the shells, so can no power in the world bring men again under the governmental type of society when once they have outgrown it.
"It may well be that government was necessary and is still necessary for all the advantages which you attribute to it," says the man who has mastered the Christian theory of life. "I only know that on the one hand, government is no longer necessary for ME, and on the other hand, I can no longer carry out the measures that are necessary to the existence of a government. Settle for yourselves what you need for your life. I cannot prove the need or the harm of governments in general. I know only what I need and do not need, what I can do and what I cannot. I know that I do not need to divide myself off from other nations, and therefore I cannot admit that I belong exclusively to any state or nation, or that I owe allegiance to any government. I know that I do not need all the government institutions organized within the state, and therefore I cannot deprive people who need my labor to give it in the form of taxes to institutions which I do not need, which for all I know may be pernicious. I know that I have no need of the administration or of courts of justice founded upon force, and therefore I can take no part in either. I know that I do not need to attack and slaughter other nations or to defend myself from them with arms, and therefore I can take no part in wars or preparations for wars. It may well be that there are people who cannot help regarding all this as necessary and indispensable. I cannot dispute the question with them, I can only speak for myself; but I can say with absolute certainty that I do not need it, and that I cannot do it. ..."
Whatever arguments may be advanced in support of the contention that the suppression of government authority would be injurious and would lead to great calamities, men who have once outgrown the governmental form of society cannot go back to it again. And all the reasoning in the world cannot make the man who has outgrown the governmental form of society take part in actions disallowed by his conscience, any more than the full-grown bird can be made to return into the egg-shell."
