Over the past week, I read an interesting essay titled "In Defense of Anarchism" by Robert Paul Wolff. It's actually a book, but at 80 pages, it was not originally intended to stand on its own. It makes reasonable arguments and has a few good points and several examples to make the concepts clear. I can't say it'll convert someone of the opposite persuasion, but it's worth reading anyway.
In fact, I have few problems with the book itself. What I have an issue with is a statement Wolff makes in his 1998 introduction. He claims his work "begins with propositions no one would question and concludes with propositions that no one would accept." This frankly is not an accurate reflection of the arguments he makes, mostly because his assertion is absolute and if it is not absolutely true in all cases then it is false. I consider myself a counter-example to his statements.
I find his initial premise untrue, but I can agree to a certain extent with his conclusion. His primary assertion is mankind individually has a right to moral autonomy, though many do abdicate this right in an act of expediency. I refuse to believe there is any such thing as an inalienable right (or in the case of Utilitarianism, morally relevant interests); people can merely refuse to recognize any action that transgresses the rights they perceive themselves to have. This does not mean they have this right, just that they believe they do. This is an important distinction.
His conclusion that our current form of a representative republic seems reasonable, however, I can understand to the point of agreement. This stems from the fact that I cannot honestly put forward the claim the term "legitimacy" is remotely relevant to politics. A state in the most abstract terms has any qualities a person identifies with it. This, however, does not make those claims true. "Legitimacy" is simply the definition given to a country as determined by a collective of individuals. It is a stipulating definition and therefore should not be reflective of the denotations and connotations currently associated with the term. Essentially, political legitimacy and what most people consider legitimacy are two separate entities.
In other words, defining a state as legitimate does not confer any moral rights regarding its existence. It is a statement that a group of individuals approve of it, nothing more and nothing less.
This of course is frequently associated with the belief "government is a necessary evil." This is also not entirely true. Government cannot in reality be either necessary or evil. These words have no place in defining such an amorphous body in theory or in reality. Government is just practical.
And this is the crux of the matter. Like an individual, government has no other rights than those it is perceived to have. This does not make "rights" in a Kantian sense but merely perceptions forced upon those who wish to accept them. A government should exist only as long as it provides a practical tool to contain a population and focus it in the direction deemed best. It is never necessary to support a government you disagree with. At this point it is in the individual’s best interest to force their desires in conflict with those of the aggregate and bring about change.
This is not a call to revolution, but merely a reassessment of legitimacy. A state is only legitimate if there is a unanimous belief in the fact. Any splintering in the collective's beliefs causes a separate perception, which must be reconciled, or it will lead to conflict.
—Thomas Shattuck is a freshman in the School of Engineering. He can be reached at thomas.w.shattuck@vanderbilt.edu
