Is coercion, even though intrinsically bad, sometimes justified? The answer depends upon both moral and empirical judgments. Although as is often the case these are somewhat interdependent, we can roughly distinguish two different sets of judgments.
First, we need to judge how likely it is that coercion would occur even without a state, that is, if people existed in what political philosophers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who confronted this very question liked to call a ''state of nature." Suppose, for example, that people in a state of nature find that one of the persons in their vicinity is a wrongdoer who simply will not refrain from doing serious harm to others. Despite the best efforts of his associates, neither reason, argument, persuasion, public opinion, nor the final sanction of social ostracism dissuades him from doing harm. His associates finally conclude that he will persist in harming others unless he is forcibly restrained or threatened with severe harm (that is, coerced). In the extreme case, such a recalcitrant wrongdoer might use weapons to appropriate another's goods, commit rape, enslave another person, engage in torture, and so on. Now if recalcitrant wrongdoers were to exist in a society without a state, then a dilemma would arise for all those who believe that coercion must not be permitted because it is intrinsically bad: whether or not the wrongdoers were coercively restrained, coercion would be employed—either by the wrongdoers or by those who restrained them.
The dilemma would become even sharper if several recalcitrant wrongdoers were to accumulate enough resources to enable them, by judicious use of rewards and punishments, to gain control over others. Thus a small gang of wrongdoers might come to dominate certain associates. By first dominating a few, they might then gain power over more, until finally they subjected the entire society to their rule. In effect, the wrongdoers would have employed coercion to create a state—a gangster state, if you will. 4
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Anarchists contend that if states did not exist coercion would soon disappear or decline to a tolerable level. Obviously this empirical judgment is crucial to the validity of their argument. If they are mistaken, if instead coercion would very likely persist even without a state, and if the most distinctive feature of anarchism—eradicating the state—is justified as a means to avoid coercion, then their dilemma is without a solution and the case for anarchism is, to say the least, profoundly weakened.
Conversely, if anarchists are mistaken about the likelihood of coercion in the absence of a state, then the case for trying to create a good or satisfactory state in order to restrict and regulate coercion is considerably strengthened. If one were to conclude that on balance the gains from creating a state are likely to exceed the costs, then from a utilitarian perspective it would be reasonable to opt for a state.
The second kind of judgment we need to make is therefore essentially a moral one. Though not everyone will evaluate coercion from a utilitarian perspective, if one concludes that coercion would be very likely to exist even in the absence of a state, one is then obliged to ask whether and in what circumstances it might be justifiable to use coercion. Even anarchists disagree about the answer. According to some, like Bakunin, coercive violence is justified and necessary in the supreme cause of overthrowing the state. But other anarchists, like Leo Tolstoy, believe that coercion and violence are never justified; in this view, the only consistent position for an anarchist is to adhere strictly to a doctrine of nonviolence (Carter 1978).
The difficulty with the first view is that if coercion is justified as a means for overthrowing the state, then it follows obviously that coercion must be justifiable provided it is used for sufficiently good or important purposes. But if so, then surely coercion might be justified in restraining recalcitrant wrongdoers, particularly if their aim was to create a gangster state. Moreover, if the reason for overthrowing the state is not only to abolish coercion but also to achieve other ends like freedom, equality, security, and justice—as most anarchists have believed—then might not coercion be justified if it were employed to achieve greater freedom, equality, security, or justice? In short, if the objection to coercion as a means is not absolute but contingent on consequences, might one not justifiably seek to create a democratic state and support its existence in order to maximize freedom and justice, minimize unregulated private coercion, and prevent a gangster state from developing?
The alternative position, according to which violence and coercion are absolutely forbidden for any purpose, is heir to at least two difficulties. First, if coercion is likely in any case to be employed by wrongdoers, then the position is selfcontradictory. For one must either allow it to occur, and in so doing permit the wrongdoer to coerce others or permit coercion to be used in order to prevent wrongdoers from engaging in coercion. But a moral position that is so selfcontradictory that it leaves one without guidance for the most elementary choices is indefensible. Second, why is avoiding coercion a supreme end that dominates all other ends? What makes noncoercion superior to justice, equality, freedom, security, happiness, and other values? If any of these ends are superior to noncoer
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Page 46 cion, then would not coercion be justified if it were the sole means in some situations for achieving the superior value? Alternatively, if one believes that the world of values is not dominated by a single absolute end but is, in William James's phrase, a pluralistic universe, then one must make judgments about tradeoffs between coercion and other values.
On the Need for a State
A moment ago I suggested that one might opt for creating a state on the ground that, given the likelihood of some coercion persisting even in the absence of a state, the advantages of regulating coercion through a state might outweigh the disadvantages. One might argue, however, that the advantages would not necessarily outweigh the disadvantages and that, even if occasional violence and coercion existed, a stateless society consisting exclusively of voluntary associations would on the whole be preferable to the compulsions of a state. Many anarchists believe that sociopathic behavior is not inevitable but is created because people are socialized into behaving in conformity with the requirements of states and the socioeconomic systems they uphold, Consequently, they insist, once states are eliminated and decent social and economic arrangements are introduced, shaming, public reprimands, shunning, and ostracism would reduce wrongdoing to tolerable levels. Thus on balance a stateless society would be better than a society with a state.
It is true that human beings have sometimes achieved a tolerable existence, perhaps even a highly satisfactory life, without a state. Judging from ethnographic descriptions, many preliterate tribes may have done so. By means of an astounding and highly humane adaptation to a harsh and dangerous environment, the Inuit (Eskimo) in northern Canada evidently existed for many centuries—until a few generations ago—without a state. Typically they lived in tiny groups of a dozen or so families united by multiple bonds of kinship, culture, religion, myth, and common fate. Transgressions of important rules were met with shame, ridicule, gossip, and occasionally ostracism. Although individual violence may have been rare, it did occur. Yet the social bonds of the Inuit and their use of social sanctions brought about a high degree of conformity with the basic rules and norms, and relations among them appear to have been far more orderly and peaceful than societies with states have ever managed to achieve.
Yet while some romantic anarchists may imagine our returning to the tiny autonomous groups of some preliterate societies, short of a cataclysm that no sane person wants, a return to the infancy of the species looks to be impossible or, if not impossible, highly undesirable. Since I want to return to this theme in chapter 13, where we shall confront the problem of scale and the nationstate, let me simply mention three reasons. First, the world is already too densely populated to provide much space for autonomy; the Inuit, after all, were few in number and inhabited a gigantic area thought by others to be an uninhabitable wasteland. Second, a multiplicity of interdependencies cannot be snapped apart without enormous costs that few people would accept.
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Third, virtually the entire globe is now already occupied by states. Throughout recorded history, small autonomous groups of people have been extraordinarily vulnerable to conquest and absorption by larger states, a phenomenon that continues to the present day. Thus either the return to a life of small autonomous stateless groups would have to occur almost simultaneously throughout the world or some states would continue to exist with their exceptional capacity and propensity for conquest and absorption. If anarchism requires the first, then anarchism must be set aside as at best an appealing fantasy. If it does not, then it must show why states would permit any small, independent group to exist anywhere on earth, with the possible exception of a few of the most remote and forbidding places on the globe where almost no one, and probably few advocates of anarchism, would care to live.
In sum, the following judgments seem reasonable:
1. In the absence of a state, highly undesirable forms of coercion would probably persist.
2. In a stateless society, some associates might in any case acquire sufficient resources to create a highly oppressive state.
3. A degree of social control sufficient to avoid the creation of a state appears to require that an association be highly autonomous, very small, and united by multiple bonds.
4. Creating such associations on a significant scale in the world today appears to be either impossible or highly undesirable.
These judgments support the conclusion that it would be better to try to create a satisfactory state than try to exist in a society without a state.
Dalam dokumen
Robert A. Dahl - Democracy and Its Critics-Yale University Press (1989)
(Halaman 47-50)