A great but little-known nineteenth-century American,
Lysander Spooner.
Spooner's position was simple. There is a moral law, which in essence we
all learn in early childhood, even before we know our math tables.
Basically it is this:
Don't harm other people. The principle is simple, even if its
applications may occasionally be difficult.
From this, Spooner reasoned, it follows that no state should exist.
Nobody can claim the power to change the moral law or a monopoly of the
authority to enforce it. But the state claims the right to do both. It
tries to change the moral law by legislation, which is falsely thought to
add to the moral duties of its subjects; and it insists that only it may
define, outlaw, and punish wrongs.
The results of the states claims include war, tyranny, slavery, and
taxation. Human society would be better off without the state.
The best argument for anarchism is the twentieth century. One scholar,
R.J. Rummel, calculates that states
in that century murdered about 177 million of their own subjects - and
that figure doesnt even count international wars. Its inconceivable that
private criminals could kill that many.
