The End of Government

When I attended college in the early 1960s, I was a member of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists — a libertarian organization created in response to the Intercollegiate Society of Socialists. So, in some sense, you could say I have always been a libertarian. I want freedom — for myself and for everyone.

But when I read the platform of the Libertarian Party in the 1990s I thought what was offered was just yet one more way of government doing things — a change without much difference.

Over the years, as I learned more, perhaps inspired by a mentor,  Benjamin Victor Cohen sometimes called the “Architect of the New Deal,” I realized that what I believe is derived from the teachings of three people of unusual brilliance.

First, it is to reverse Plato’s pattern of decline that begins with “government of the best” (i.e., those best able to govern people wisely) but descends to democracy and then tyranny. We have reached the bottom of this decline, ruled by what John Stuart Mill called “tyranny of the majority.” It would be a great improvement to be governed by the best — as exemplified by the mandarins of China and the Confucian scholars who advanced to serve the government in Korea.

Second, it is in keeping with the views of those who want a smaller government — the view of libertarians. This might best be understood by the first words of Henry Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government” (“Civil Disobedience”):

“I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least;’ and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe ‘That government is best which governs not at all’ and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”

Third is a teaching  Friedrich Engels attributed to Karl Marx: “The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong — into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax.” As Engels phrased it elsewhere: “The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not ‘abolished,’ it withers away.”

Marx predicted that in the most advanced countries [i.e., Germany and England], ten developments would be most likely. Now these are also seen in the US: government (public) free education, property taxes, graduated income taxes, a national monopoly of credit through a central bank (the Federal Reserve), government highways and airports, industrialization of agriculture, outlawing of child labor, and more.

The desirable future progression of the all-powerful and dictatorial state, which we currently experience, is toward leadership of the most able and then to the orderly withering away of the State. Those most able to lead will have a clear understanding of how this might be achieved in an orderly way that benefits the entire society.