Engaging Libertarian and Griardian Theory

The Failure of Rationalist Libertarian Theory to Explain the State

At the outset, one might consider two views of libertarian political theory. The first is that libertarian theory, as exposited by Rothbard or whomever, is essentially correct and complete, and requires only propagation, not improvement. The contrary view is that there is something radically incomplete about libertarian theorization, and the failure of libertarianism in the real world (more wars, more invasions of civil rights, higher taxes, inflation, and public debt, i.e., business as usual) is symptomatic not merely of an obstinate unreceptiveness to libertarian theory, but to the fact that the latter is singularly unconvincing in many regards. This article is the first essay in a larger project of trying to bring the insights of Rene Girard into the context of libertarian political philosophy and economics.

First of all, a word must be said about rationalism. If there is a second value which is appealed to by libertarians as a counterpart to freedom it is rationality. I want to make a distinction between two forms of rationalism, methodological rationalism and object rationalism. The first is simply a normative principle. To take a historical example, that of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis (quite apart from whether one thinks that psychoanalysis is effective or not), Freud can be described as having a rational program for the investigation of human irrationality. One may contrast this with the philosophy of Ayn Rand, which not only insisted that its internal method was rational, but that the object of its investigation, the human mind, was intrinsically rational.

The problem of the origin of the state may be seen as beset by object-rationalism on both sides of issue. Normative statists, such as Rousseau, see the state as resulting from a social contract. On the other extreme are normative anarchists who see the state as the result of a class conspiracy. Paradigmatic of this view is the work of Etienne de la Boette, to whom Rothbard appeals. In between these views are better researched but supposedly value-free theories of the state, such as those of Oppenheimer and Wittfoegel. These latter often appeal to environmental, technological, and demographic factors which over ride human agency.

Common to all these views, both those which stress conscious choice and those which evade human agency all together, is an objection to psychologism. It is as if their authors thought the problem of human error can be isolated from the problem of the origin of the state. This is, of course, not a problem for Rousseau and other social compact thinkers, for whom the state is not a mistake. Nor is it a problem from the point of view of environmental theorists. However to anarchists clinging to class theories there seems to be an artificial gap between the possibility of human error and the actuality of the state. Seeking to maintain an object-rationalism in regard to human nature, they isolate the formation of the state as a rational, but unjust, act which saddled civilization with injustice.

Statecraft as (Damned) Soulcraft

However this optimistic view of nature squares ill with the moral exceptionalism of the state as the sole source of social evils. First of all, if the state represents falsehood and exploitation, there must have been some sort of anterior propensity in human nature towards falsehood and exploitation, which created the potential for the state to arise. Secondly, and much more to the point, statists should be taken at their word when they say the state is sacred, and that it is beyond rational discussion. In fact, a familiarity with political history, both modern and archaic, will convince anyone that (admittedly under diverse guises) that the state has a well defined sacred or “numinous” character. Whether this numinosity be of a divine or demonic nature can be set aside for the moment, but as a phenomenologica attribute it is most pronounced.

Therefore, from the point of view of a religiously based, rather than atheistic, libertarianism…the problem of the state must be considered a subset, albeit perhaps the most acute subset, of the problem of human evil. The danger here is that one may dissipate into generalities or lapse into fatalism. Fortunately, during the latter part of the twentieth century, a new mode of theorizing was put forth by the French scholar Rene Girard, one which claimed to be both authentically scientific and true to religious (specifically Christian) insights on the nature of human error.

Girardian theory maintains that human societies are founded on sacrifice, and human sacrifice in particular. These sacrifices are necessary to expell the rivalrous tensions between the groups which constitute society. Such tensious are originally created when individuals or groups begin imitating each other in their desires, a process which Girard calls mimesis. The mimesis of rivalry is supplanted and expurged by a scapegoating mimesis during times of crisis. Girard doesn’t explicitly say that the political organization which we call the “state” is founded on this kind of sacrificial scapegoating, but such an assertion is well within the implications of his theory. Rather Girard speaks of “Cainite society” being based on this principle, i.e., murder.

Girard seems to have a high opinion of the system of public justice which is administered in France and other countries, however his category “Cainite society” could easily be pressed into the service of libertarianism, for it is in all respects equivalent to “political society.” Keep in mind that Cain, after having killed Abel, devoted himself to the founding of cities, and the word for cities (polis, stadt, medinat) is also the word for “state” in most laguages. Therefore if we transfer what Girard has to say about sacrifice and scapegoating from the anthropological and theological spheres to the realm of politics, we have a very powerful and intuitively appealing paradigm for antistatism.

Adopting this Girardian insight we may say that, contrary to Rouseau, the state is not based on a contract, but on a murder. It cannot even be said to be a “murder contract” since this connotes an act of criminal rationality. But a murder accomplished by the generality of society cannot be acnowleged as murder per se, so the memory of the event must be obscured. This obscuration is the origin of myth, with its seemingly irrational narratives. According to Girard (following Freud here) they are the disguised memories of an act which is too terrible for rational acnowlegement. What is important for our analysis here is that myth constitutes the political constitution of society. Constitutions are written precisely to exculpate their writers from the murder of those who’s bones the state is founded upon…precisely with the intention that “murder will not out!” Or, as George Will famously said “statecraft is soulcraft”…but in this case the crafting of damned souls!

A great deal could be said about the benefits of supplanting an overly rational theory of the state by a Girardian type of theory…but that will have to await further posts.