Nation, Country, and State

These are words that confuse a lot of speakers of present-day English, especially in the United States, and since they not only have some bearing on discussions of anarchy but are also used with some frequency in the Scriptures, I though it might be helpful to talk more about them.

Many people use all three of these words interchangeably. They call the United States of America a nation; they call it a country; they call it a state. Of the three of these words, the one that best fits the entity in question — state — is probably the one that citizens of the United States are least likely to think of as a word that can describe the United States. That has to do with the problems introduced by the federal structure of the United States. Furthermore, the one word least suited to describing the United States of America — nation — is probably the one that most citizens of the United States think is the best match for the United States. It is, after all, "one nation under God," they would say. All of this shows the problems that these words cause for present-day English speakers.

The search engine at scriptures.lds.org shows that the word "nation" or its variants occurs 338 times in the Scriptures (Bible: 253, Triple Combination: 85), that the word "country" or its variants occurs 205 times (Bible: 161, TC: 44), and that the word "state" or its variants occurs 64 times (Bible: 14, TC: 50). These are pretty important words, then, and people reading the scriptures today are likely to link them all, in some way, to governments. But we shouldn't do that with any of the words but "state", and there only in certain contexts. A look at each of these words will show why.

Nation
The word "nation" does not need to involve any kind of government.

It refers to a group of people who all share some important similarities. They usually have the same race and speak the same language. They usually share many cultural similarities: they have similar cuisine, similar sports and games, similar family structures, and so forth. They often have a single religion. They usually have a remarkably uniform body of customary laws (see my earlier post on law for what that means). Furthermore, members of a nation can usually be distinguished from members of other nations by the fact that there are significant differences along most of these lines between two people who are each members of different nations.

The word nation is descended from a Latin word for birth. It is related to such English words as "pre-natal" and "natural". A person's nationality is something that is a function of his birth. The ancient Greek word for nation is "ethnos", and it gives us our modern English word "ethnicity". A person's ethnicity and a person's nationality are the same thing, and neither one has to do with what government has power over the land of one's birth or residence.

There are nations that have no sovereign government, such as the Kurdish nation or the Basque nation. There are nations that have multiple sovereign governments, such as the Arab nation or the Korean nation. There are governments that control multiple nations, such as Indonesia or the United States of America. Government and nations are completely different concepts and are totally independent of one another.

Now for those who say I'm wrong and point to things like passports that say "nationality" and then proceed to talk of the government whose jurisdiction is under, or things like the United Nations that brings together governments from around the world, let me say that the word "nation" has definitely begun to acquire a meaning related to government. I recognize that. Most uses of the word nation these days are references to something related to government.

But there are two problems that this shift in meaning has brought about.

The first is that we now lack a government-neutral word to talk about the concept. We do have the word "ethnicity", but it doesn't seem to carry the same sense of unity that the word "nation" used to carry. One reason for that is that "ethnicity" is used most frequently as a description for people who are in areas where there are representatives of many ethnicities. Ethnicity might be an important characteristic to discuss in New York City, but not in small-town Utah. Nation, on the other hand, before it began involving governments, was a word that felt important to people in the most rural, homogeneous communities — it united them with their kind across many miles, and even borders. The word "nation" still has this uniting effect: people in small-town Utah are often immensely proud of their nation. But ethnicity doesn't have the effect. So now we have no word to refer to the natural unity shared among people of a single ethnic group (particularly when they live in a contiguous territory), without referring to governments.

The second problem with the shift in meaning that "nation" has undergone is that now people reading the scriptures today misunderstand them. The English in use when the Scriptures were translated (in the case of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and most of the Pearl of Great Price) or written (in the case of the Doctrine and Covenants and some of the Pearl of Great Price) did not have the current, government-oriented sense for the word "nation". In Webster's 1828 dictionary, which tells us the meanings words in the Triple Combination would have had for Joseph Smith and his contemporaries, the word nation is defined thus:

A body of people inhabiting the same country, or united under the same sovereign government; as the English nation; the French nation. It often happens that many nations are subject to one government; in which case, the word nation usually denotes a body of people speaking the same language, or a body that has formerly been under a distinct government, but has been conquered, or incorporated within a larger nation. Thus the empire of Russia comprehends many nations, as did formerly the Roman and Persian empires. Nation, as its etymology imports, originally denoted a family or race of men descended from a common progenitor, like tribe, but by emigration, conquest and intermixture of men of different families, this distinction is in most countries lost.

Notice that, although the governmental sense was beginning to creep into the word, it still had meaning in a non-governmental sense. Few people today would talk of the many nations of Russia, for example. In 1828, however, such a usage of nation was perfectly acceptable, and indeed demonstrated the fact that the word didn't have to refer to governments. So when the word is found in the Doctrine and Covenants or the Book of Mormon, it should be understood as something that can refer to a group of people that are united culturally but not governmentally.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives an older meaning of the word and some discussion of its development over time:

A large aggregate of communities and individuals united by factors such as common descent, language, culture, history, or occupation of the same territory, so as to form a distinct people. Now also: such a people forming a political state; a political state. In early examples notions of race and common descent predominate. In later use notions of territory, political unity, and independence are more prominent, although some writers still make a pointed distinction between nation and state.

The non-governmental use of the term would have been its only use in 1611, when the Bible (the King James Version, that is) was translated into English. So when you see the word in the Bible, you have to understand it in a way that doesn't involve governments at all. So when you read things like "God hath made all nations and determined the bounds of their habitation" (Acts 17:26), you can't interpret that as saying that the God ordained the governments and laid down their jurisdictional borders. That's not what the word nation meant in 1611 when that translation was made. It meant that God made the ethnicities and set up the proper natural habitats for each ethnicity. It didn't have anything to do with governments.

I'll be using the word "nation" in this blog in its older, scriptural sense. So when you see "nation" in this blog, don't think that I'm talking about governments. A nation in the older sense can exist and even prosper without having any national government.

Country
Country is word that refers to a spot of land or territory. Originally, it referred to the area of land immediately surrounding a city. This sense survives in some fashion when we talk about people who live "in the country" as opposed to living "in the city". Already by 1611, however, this sense of the word had begun to be replaced by the sense of simply "A tract or expanse of land of undefined extent; a region, district" — the definition the Oxford English Dictionary gives for it. You'll still hear this sense of the word sometimes, as when people say things like, "this sure is pretty country."

However, this word, like nation, has come to acquire a more governmental meaning. We speak of the Philippines, for example, as being a country, even though it is actually a group of over 7,000 islands. In other words, it is actually over 7,000 tracts or expanses of land, and therefore over 7,000 countries in the older sense of the word.

By 1828, the governmental sense of the word had mostly taken over the land-based sense of the word. Consequently, when the word shows up in the Triple Combination, it could be referring to governments along with the lands and people those governments control. However, since some older senses of the word still show up in our language today, those older senses could be present in the modern Scriptures as well.

In 1611, when the Bible was translated, the word did not have its governmental overtones. So when Paul talks about those with faith and says "now they desire a heavenly country" (Hebrews 11:16), he's not saying the faithful want to improve their current government so that it follows God's commandments or that they want to switch allegiance to some existing government seen as more godly than their current one. He's saying that they want to dwell in the land where God dwells — they want to occupy the same general region of space in which God physically dwells. Government isn't part of the passage at all.

In this blog, I will try to use the older, Biblical sense of the word "country" — that is, I'll try to use it to refer just to expanses of land. I will try to never use it in the newer, governmental sense of the word. If I slip here or there and it gets confusing, please feel free to ask for clarification.

State
This word refers to governments.

Of course, it also refers to very many other things — we talk about solid, liquid, and gas as "states of matter"; we say that rundown buildings are "in a sorry state"; we speak of dignitaries being "buried in state"; we even think of people as being in a particular "state of mind". Most of the uses of "state" in the Scriptures are uses like these that have nothing whatsoever to do with governments.

But of all these three words — nation, country, and state — "state" is the only one that properly refers to governments.

Dictionaries usually give all the definitions of "state", so they can be confusing sources to go to for a definition of the governmental sense of "state". Encyclopedias often give better definitions for the governmental sense. That is because the governmental sense of the word is the primary sense about which a great deal of theorizing has been done. People don't theorize about what "state" really means in a phrase like "state of matter" or "state of mind" — they just use the word and move on. But when we talk about what governments are and how they operate and should operate, we tend, as a species, to start generating a lot of theory about the meaning of "state".

Going to the cheapest — and I mean cheapest — encyclopedia I know of (Wikipedia), you can find (today, at least) the following definitions of state: "a political association with effective sovereignty over a geographic area; that organization that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory" (Wikipedia, "State", 26 Mar 2008).

So when we talk about states, we are talking about sovereignty and force. We are talking about government. We are talking about what anarchism opposes.

The scriptures use this sense only once to refer to something other than specific states (the State of Vermont, the State of Missouri, the State of Illinois, the United States, &c.). That use is found in D&C 134:7: "We believe that rulers, states, and governments have a right, and are bound to enact laws for the protection of all citizens in the free exercise of their religious belief; but we do not believe that they have a right in justice to deprive citizens of this privilege, or proscribe them in their opinions, so long as a regard and reverence are shown to the laws and such religious opinions do not justify sedition nor conspiracy." Note that this is not a revelation, but a statement of beliefs that was put in the Scriptures to quiet the fears of those enemies of the Church who believed that Mormons were advocating rebellion and sedition.

Some confusion comes into play for people in the United States, because these people often think of "state" as referring to a minor government (or the territory it governs) operating under the control of a larger, sovereign government. This confusion had already entered American English by 1860, and the Civil War (also called the War Between the States) was fought primarily over the definition of the word "state" — the North wanted to bring in the new definition; the South wanted to keep the older, traditional definition that is still predominant outside the United States.

I will use this word to refer to governments (and sometimes their territories and even citizens) in this blog. I will use it in its older, traditional sense — the sense it still has in the rest of the world.

I will refer to entities such as Utah, Nevada, and Arizona as states as well — even though in practice they are more like Canadian provinces than real states — because everyone else calls them states and because I think that, if governments are going to exist, they should operate the way they are officially constituted (so at least the people know exactly how they are going to be exploited) and the United States are officially constituted in a far more federal fashion than they currently operate in.

So don't be confused if I say that anarchy is good for nations or that a particular country is especially well-suited to anarchy. I'm not saying such contradictory things as anarchy is good for governments or a particular government is well-suited to anarchy. That's not what those words mean. Anarchy is bad for states, and no state is well-suited to anarchy. No, what I'm saying when I say those other things is that anarchy is good for ethnicities and that a particular tract of land is well-suited to anarchy.

On Law

Because the word "law" has come up and will continue to come up throughout the blog, I thought it might be helpful to explain how I see the word and its various meanings.

One meaning of the word law, and indeed probably the meaning that comes most frequently to mind among the majority of English speakers, is a written codification of prescribed or proscribed behavior, produced by a state's legislative authority. This is law in the statutory sense. Law in this sense might also include treaties and documents establishing the ground law for a state such as a Constitution.

Another meaning of the word law is the reference to the legal profession and its products. This might refer to things like case law, lawyers' (robed or unrobed) interpretation of legislated laws, and really any other aspect of judicial or tribunal legal matters.

Another meaning of the word law is the reference to the enforcers of the law and their interpretation of the law. This usage has a somewhat colloquial flavor when the word law is
actually used with this meaning, but its impact as law is nevertheless powerful in the lives of those confronted by the state's hired gunmen. This form of law includes everything from the arbitrary decision of individual police officers to either punish or ignore individual violations of statutory law all the way up to executive orders and other policy decisions from a state's chief executive officer.

All three of these meanings refer to laws imposed on men by other men because the lawmen (for lack of a better term) believe they are better fit to decide how the governed ought to behave than the governed themselves are. The rationale for this arrogated superiority might be a high-minded appeal to some philosophy of justice or "reason free from passion", or it might simply be a hunch that a given individual should be spied on, arrested, or even battered or killed. In this blog, I frequently refer to this sort of law as the law of men. I also refer to it as bondage, force, coercion, and all sorts of other nasty things.

There are other meanings of law used here, though.

One additional meaning is the sense in phrases like the Law of Gravity or Boyle's Law or the Law of Cosines. These are laws not in the sense that man has decided how the world ought to work, but in the sense that man has observed a certain regularity that seems to hold true, or fairly close to true, in all or nearly all situations. Some laws of this type are absolutely true (such as the Law of Cosines for planar trigonometry), while others are only probabilistic or approximate models based on readily observable data (such as Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation). Nevertheless, laws of this sort are not governed by man at all, but by reality that lies external to mankind.

Another, similar sense can be found in phrases like the Law of Supply and Demand, or Gresham's Law, or even Godwin's Law. Unlike laws like Boyle's Law or the Law of Cosines, but like the legislative, judicial, or executive laws discussed above, these are laws relating to human behavior. However, like Boyle's Law and unlike legislated law, these laws try to explain human behavior that has been observed rather than prescribing or proscribing certain behaviors. For example, the Law of Supply and Demand contains the idea that if demand for a good increases while its supply remains constant, its price will increase. That doesn't mean anyone will go to jail for selling it at the same price he would have sold it before the spike in demand — it just means the buyer would probably have been willing to pay more (and most sellers would have charged more). These laws simply try to explain certain regular patterns of behavior that seem common to all mankind.

There is another kind of law that is similar to such behavioral laws as the Law of Supply and Demand but more similar in feel, perhaps, to legislated law. That kind of law is the customary law of a given group of people. If the group is small, the law is usually called a custom or habit or a tradition or maybe even a rule — my family ate waffles for dinner on Sunday as a rule while I was a child, for example, just as we traditionally ate hard-boiled eggs on Easter Sunday that we had dyed the night before. When a group is larger, like a nation, these customary behaviors are often called laws. For example, the customary laws of the Anglo-Saxon people were the foundation for English common law, and that body of customary law forms the basis of the legal systems of most of the United States as well as most of the member states of the British Commonwealth. This kind of law often seems to prescribe behavior, but in fact, it is really better viewed as a description of the kind of natural order that any group of people in close association will tend to develop. The body of customary law is culture specific and is therefore unique to the group that lives by it, unlike the Law of Supply and Demand and other laws meant to describe universal tendencies in human behavior. It is also usually a rich reservoir of cultural lore and vitality. All groups develop a body of customary law over time, and that law body of customary law is probably the primary contributing factor in the maintenance of what we consider orderly society. In a very important way, this kind of law belongs more to the class of laws like Boyle's or Gresham's than the class of laws like the Constitution or the IRS code: the body of customary laws is not enforced or even codifiable but rather a description of naturally occurring tendencies. Furthermore, this kind of law is very important in discussions of anarchy.

Finally, there is the law of God. In a previous post, I talked about how God's law is not enforced the way legal statutes are. As a Latter-day Saint, I have grown up believing that God's law is simply a statement of the behaviors that are necessary to have the kind of happiness and power that God has. I am not certain that this is taught explicitly in the Church of Jesus Christ, but I think it is implicit in the doctrines of the Church and generally believed. We know that God is our father and he loves us and he wants us to become like him. We also know that he is far, far wiser than we are now. We also know that he has told us how we ought to live, and that he has promised us that if we do what he says, we will become like him someday. I think the only logical conclusion to draw from all of this is that he knows how to be like him and he wants to tell us what to do to enjoy the same kind of existence, and that those things are simply the explanation of natural laws. It could be compared to a karate instructor who teaches his students to move in particular ways so that they can get more power. The instructor understands the principles that naturally govern moving one's body to maximize martial power, and he gives his students commands in order to impart those principles to them. So God, I think, understands the principles that govern eternal life, and he gives us commands to try to teach us those principles so that we can have eternal life, too. So the law of God is a description of natural law as well.

All these laws fall into two groups. The first includes all laws that are prescriptions invented by men for the purpose of planning or controlling human interaction. The second group includes all laws that are descriptions of naturally occurring causes and effects, both in human interaction and in all other aspects of the universe. Laws of the first type are usually the kind of thing anarchism opposes. Laws of the second type usually are not.

I think laws of the second type, the descriptions of naturally occurring regularities, are natural laws, and therefore, in some sense, laws of God. That doesn't mean I think God really cares that my family habitually ate waffles for dinner on Sundays, but the law of waffles on Sunday was a kind of order we naturally fell into, and I think that kind of voluntary, self-generated order is the sort of thing God wants us to develop our capacity for. As the Creator of the universe, he has to be pretty organized — if he wants us to become like him, you would think he wants us to be organized to. The voluntary, self-generated kind of order helps us exercise our individual capacity for order and organization. On the other hand, the coerced order imposed by states and whatnot discourages the development of individual orderliness by encouraging our reliance on the orderliness dictated by our fellowmen. In that sense, then, I think that habitually eating waffles on Sundays was a law of God, or a godly law — law the way God intended it.

About the United States' Constitution

Latter-day Saints tend to be a prominent part of the Constitutionalist movement in the United States. Though certainly not all Mormons are Constitutionalists in the sense of the word favored by, say, the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, or Representative Ron Paul from the conservative wing of the Republican Party, a disproportionately number of active Constitutionalists of that stripe are Latter-day Saints.

Even among American Latter-day Saints who are not active in the Constitutionalist movement, a strong respect and even adoration of the United States' Constitution is quite common. This respect undoubtedly has its ultimate basis in the three references to the Constitution in modern revelations recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants:

D&C 98:4–7:
4 And now, verily I say unto you concerning the laws of the land, it is my will that my people should observe to do all things whatsoever I command them.
5 And that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me.
6 Therefore, I, the Lord, justify you, and your brethren of my church, in befriending that law which is the constitutional law of the land;
7 And as pertaining to law of man, whatsoever is more or less than this, cometh of evil.

D&C 101:76–80:
76 And again I say unto you, those who have been scattered by their enemies, it is my will that they should continue to importune for redress, and redemption, by the hands of those who are placed as rulers and are in authority over you--
77 According to the laws and constitution of the people, which I have suffered to be established, and should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles;
78 That every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment.
79 Therefore, it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another.
80 And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I have up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood.

D&C 109:54:
Have mercy, O Lord, upon all the nations of the earth; have mercy upon the rulers of our land; may those principles, which were so honorably and nobly defended, namely, the Constitution of our land, by our fathers, be established forever.

These are the only references to the Constitution in the scriptures used by the Church of Jesus Christ, and yet they seem to have instilled an indelible respect for that particular legal document in the collective consciousness of the Mormon people.

So how can this Mormon tendency to revere a document establishing a government be reconciled with the concept of Mormon anarchism? I think the answer lies in a closer examination of those revelations that form the basis of the reverence. Looked at more closely, these passages reveal not the primacy of the Constitution, but the primacy of freedom — and that is where the reverence Mormons tend to feel for the Constitution should properly lie. And freedom is anything but incompatible with anarchy.

Of these three passages, the last is slightly different from the first two. It is from the prayer offered to dedicate the Kirtland Temple. That prayer was revealed to Joseph Smith by the Lord, but the speaker in the passage is not the Lord but Joseph Smith. The speaker in the other two passages is the Lord himself. This difference, though, doesn't seem to affect the doctrine of the passages involved — just the way we have to read them to understand them. The doctrine about the Constitution seems consistent throughout the three passages.

The first passage contains an interesting discussion of the laws of men. The Lord says basically, "when it comes to the laws of men, follow my law." I take that to mean that the Lord expects us to more or less disregard the laws of men — that is, he expects us to keep his commandments without regard to the commandments men devise.

But then he goes on to say that the laws of men that are constitutional belong to all mankind and are justifiable before him. Now, he makes it clear what he means by the word "constitutional", too. He means law that supports the principle of freedom. Law like that, he says, is justifiable. Notice that he doesn't call it good. He just calls it justifiable. It's as though he's saying, "I'd really rather you not have laws among yourselves and were just content with my law, but if you're going to come up with laws of your own, just make sure they support your freedom and I guess I'll be able to handle that." That hardly sounds like a law worth revering.

It's also interesting to note that he says such law belongs to all mankind. I think that removes the law from the kind of contexts we normally associate with law. It can't be the kind of law that belongs solely to the legislatures who craft it. It can't belong solely to the lawyers and judges who interpret it — the precise group to whom much of our statutes and the whole federal Constitution are presumed to belong. It can't even belong to a single state whose jurisdiction is affected by it. No such law is the kind of law the Lord justifies us in befriending. The kind of law he justifies us in befriending must belong to all mankind.

What is more, any laws of men that vary at all from simply supporting the principle of freedom, and that in a manner that can be said to belong to all mankind, come of evil.

The second passage doesn't get more friendly to the Constitution that the first. Though in verse 80, the Lord says that he established the Constitution, in verse 77, he says that he merely suffered it to be established. He let it happen. That sounds more consistent with the way he spoke of it in the other revelation. And he let it happen so that every one could be free and no one would be in bondage one to another.

Now, one has to wonder why he didn't simply push for anarchy at that time if anarchy is how he wants us to live. I think there are a number of reasons why he didn't. I think the greatest reason is that there were too many people in America pushing for government at the time. There were already nascent states forming out of each of the colonies in rebellion, as well as a kind of government beginning to form among the various rebellious states in combination. And most of the colonists had grown up believing, as do most of us today, in the inevitability of states. The people would not likely have permitted anarchy.

Furthermore, there existed at the time a complex network of powerful states vying for control of any land outside of Europe that seemed ungoverned. Even if the rebellious Anglo-Americans had dissolved all forms of state control among themselves, they would not likely have remained free from the control of external state forces. Within twenty years, the various imperial powers of Europe would have laid claim to the land and all people and possessions on it.

In such circumstances, the Lord permitted a state to form in America. And he suffered the Constitution that was written to be established. But since he felt the creation of a new state was inevitable given the temperament of the American people, he wanted to make sure he could get a state as free as it could possibly be by raising up men who would be mindful of freedom and capable of devising a state that would be as supportive as any state can of that eternally vital principle. And as states go, the Constitution provides a good one. For the most part, the Constitution makes the business of statecraft very difficult. A government run according to the Constitution is severely hobbled — we usually like to call the hobbles "checks and balances", but by any name, they make a very inefficient and ineffective government. I can see why the Lord would steer us toward creating a state like that if we insisted on having a state and he were inclined to suffer it to be established. A government that can't operate can't impede our freedom.

As we know by now, of course, the Constitution has not be sufficient protection against the evils inherent in states and the creatures of states like corporations and private property. The principle of freedom that lets us each be accountable for our own sins on Judgement Day is pretty well forgotten. But the Lord never said he liked the Constitution itself — just the principle of freedom it was meant to protect. The freedom is what matters. So we needn't mourn the Constitution's shortcomings: it was only a means to an end anyway.

The third passage continues the theme of the Constitution being a means to an end. Joseph Smith prayed that the Lord would have mercy on the nations of all the earth and the rulers of this land by establishing "those principles which were so honorably and nobly defended" forever. He says that those principles were, by name, the Constitution. But having read the previous revelations, we understand the principles he's talking about. They are the principles of freedom and individual accountability, the idea that every one should be free to act for himself and plan for his own future, with no man being in bondage one to another, so that each man will be accountable for his own sins on Judgement Day. That is what Joseph Smith prayed would be established forever. The Constitution that is the embodiment of those principles, the Constitution that belongs to all mankind, is the only Constitution he prayed for. Indeed, it is the only Constitution mentioned in the scriptures. And it is the only law of men that the Lord justifies us in befriending.

Is that Constitution the Constitution for the United States of America? I think not, since that document does not belong to all mankind. Furthermore, the United States' Constitution, as good as it is, does not fully protect the principles of freedom. I think he was talking about a different kind of constitution, something perhaps more along the lines of what he says in D&C 89:10 when he says that all wholesome herbs are ordained for the constitution, nature, and use of man. I think he's talking about our constitution as his children, our essential makeup and composition. And the quintessential element of our constitution is our freedom. That constitution belongs to all mankind, and all men, as a rule, naturally recognize our innate freedom. That naturally occurring rule, that law of nature so integral to our eternal constitution, is, I think, the constitutional law that the Lord accepts. Any man-made law that is more or less than that cometh of evil.

Is Anarchism Impossible?

It is a common criticism lobbed against anarchists that the idea may be pleasant but is, of course, unworkable in the real world. Notice that they always say "of course" — it saves them the work of having to justify their out-of-hand rejection.

Now, Mormons — like any Christians — are used to people telling us that things we believe in fervently are, of course, impossible in the real world. We believe that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, that he was crucified to expiate the sins of all mankind, and that on the third day after his crucifixion he rose from the dead to live forever. As Mormons, we believe that the resurrected Lord appeared to Joseph Smith on multiple occasions beginning and 1820 and continuing throughout Joseph's life to instruct him as he had instructed Paul so many centuries before. We believe that a prophet who lived 1600 years ago somewhere on the American continent came to Joseph Smith as an angel and told him of a sacred record written on golden plates that he had buried while he was alive. We believe that after Joseph Smith acquired this record, which was written in a language that seems to have been completely unknown by any but its writers, he was able to translate the record into English by the power of God. Every one of these claims is the sort of thing that most people reject as impossible in the real world. But as Christians, we know that "With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26).

As a result, the simple claim of impossibility is insufficient to make us, as people of faith, reject a notion we believe to be based on true principles. Nevertheless, the claim of anarchy's impossibility deserves some answer for the sake of those who lack faith in Jesus Christ's statement that "all things are possible."

The basic ideas of anarchy are simple. Everyone must be free to make his own choices. Everyone must be free to spend his time as he chooses. Everyone must have full control over what he does with his time and what he makes with his time. An extension of that last concept is the idea that everyone should receive, as a reward for his own labor, neither more nor less than the full product of that labor. The only proper restriction on one man's freedom is the freedom of his fellowmen. All of these concepts are readily understandable and even observable by most people.

The only difficulty occurs when we consider the possibility that a minority of people will want to abuse the weaker among their fellowmen for their own gain or pleasure. This criminal tendency is seen as inevitable by anarchism's detractors, and the only solution they see for it is the establishment of a body which will have the sole legal right to exert legitimate force — that is, the establishment of a state. I question both those views.

First, I do not believe that criminal tendencies are as inevitable as we think they are. The Lord has said, "I, the Lord God, make you free, therefore ye are free indeed; and the law also maketh you free. Nevertheless, when the wicked rule the people mourn" (D&C 98:8–9). Notice what he's saying there. He makes us free. The law (i.e., his commandments) makes us free. But when the wicked rule, the people are not free.

The example of King Noah from Mosiah 11 in the Book of Mormon shows us how the people lose their general God-given freedom. The example of wickedness set by wicked rulers encourages the people to become wicked as well. Now the wickedness mentioned in D&C 98 is contrasted with freedom: it is almost certainly the opposite of that freedom, the criminal tendency toward controlling other people for your own gain or pleasure. When rulers with that mindset rise up, they propagate that mindset throughout the nation.

I believe that one of the primary reasons the criminal tendency to control others is so prevalent in our society is because we have established so many systems of control. How can a child learn he is free if he is controlled by his mother? How can a woman treat her children with freedom if she is controlled by her husband? How can a man respect the freedom of his wife and children if he is controlled by his employer? How can an employer respect the freedom of the laborers if he is controlled by a state? It can be done — with God all things are possible. But when we establish so many complex systems of control and exploitation, when we embed the principle of controlling one another instead of cooperating with one another into our society at a structural level, we certainly make it difficult for people to learn to respect every one else's freedom.

If we dismantled all these systems of control by which men are held in bondage one to another, we would go a long way toward removing the examples of control and exploitation from people. It's easy for a criminal to feel justified in exploiting his victims of those same victims embrace their exploitation at the hands of their employers and their governments and even their so-called loved ones. If all those systems of bondage were gone, the criminal would truly be abnormal, in a much deeper sense than any criminal is abnormal today. That would cut down on a lot of crime. Not all crime, I think, but probably most. And what crime remained would not be enough to destroy society. It would be a nuisance, to be sure, but it would not dissolve society anymore than the far more common occurrence of unpunished crime under our current state system does.

Second, the solution to the amount of crime that would remain after government were abolished needn't involve any kind of monopoly of legitimate force (as though such a thing could exist). One solution to the problem is simply to ignore it. That seems to be the primary solution employed by our governments today, since only a minority of crimes lead to the criminal's punishment, and it seems to work reasonably well for society as a whole. With the lower crime rate that would occur if people had no need to break free from vertical control and no incentive to gain more wealth than their insufficient wages supply, unpunished crime would become even more manageable.

But other solutions exist as well. If it becomes known that a given person has behaved in a criminal manner and, in response, the members of the community decide to shun him, that person will have little enjoyment with the fruits of his crime. He might steal, but he'll never be able to spend what he stole. He might rape, but he'll never be able to enjoy a woman's free association with him again. He might defraud, but he'll never find a trusting neighbor again. Much of this will happen naturally — people don't like doing business with thieves; women don't like dating cads; boys who cry wolf end up getting eaten when no one comes to rescue them. The pain of gaining a reputation for harming people is often a powerful deterrent for potential criminals and a strong impetus toward repentance for those who debase themselves through crime.

Some crime will still remain, though, even after the removal of governmental example & incentive systems and the reinvigoration of reputation's sting. Some criminals will not care about reputation. Some will even seek infamy. But we don't need to create any monopoly of force to deal with them. If their activities become too unbearable to a free populace, a sufficient expression of free force will naturally occur. We think of this sort of thing as vigilantism, a societal impulse that naturally occurs when a state is either absent or too weak to suit the needs of the people. It works very well, and its expression of force is usually commensurate to the extent of criminality: murderers and rapists get hanged or shot, batterers get beaten, confidence men get ridden out of town on rails.

The only reasonable worry we might have about vigilantism is that the group of vigilantes might unduly restrict the freedom of individuals who, though not behaving criminally, are still considered offensive by the people of a community. There are two reasons, though, why that is an unlikely occurrence in an anarchistic society.

First, in an anarchy, vigilantism would not be carried out by organized groups, but by spontaneous actions of the people. Such spontaneous crowds are a lot less likely to form in response to any non-criminal behavior than in response to any criminal behavior. Consequently, the rate at which spontaneous vigilantism would occur to restrict the freedom of an individual to engage in non-criminal activity would be quite low — low enough that it could be ignored without tearing at the fabric of society.

Second, in an anarchy, the individual vigilantes would feel less motivation toward control than would individual vigilantes under the influence of systemic control and exploitation. Every individual would be less inclined to control people in a criminal manner if all the systems of control were removed. As a result, the vigilante impulse in the individuals who would participate in vigilantism would be far less urgent than it is for people who are accustomed to systemic control.

So crime, the primary argument for the creation of governments, can be dealt with by society without using force to combat it. Of course, some crime would occur in an anarchistic society. Anarchists aren't trying to convince people that crime would be done away with if we made the transition to anarchy. They're merely saying that fighting undue force and coercion with tools like force and coercion can lead to problems, particularly when force and coercion become embedded in the structure of the society. If we remove the force and coercion from the structure of our society, then crime will drop dramatically — probably to levels that can be absorbed by society without difficulty — and what little crime remains would be responded to without resorting to systematizing force and coercion through such natural impulses as shunning and vigilantism.

What is Capitalism?

Anarchy is opposed to capitalism. As an anarchist, I oppose capitalism. I think it's evil and degrading for everyone involved in the affair. Most anarchists feel the same way. As a Mormon, I believe the scriptures and the writings of modern prophets all oppose capitalism as well.

But statements like these tend to confuse people — especially people in the United States, where the word "capitalism" has come to mean something different from its original meaning. So I thought it would be useful to define the word "capitalism" as it's used in this blog (and, so far as I have read, in the writings of most anarchists).

First let me say clearly that capitalism does not mean 'free market'. That's probably the biggest single source of misunderstanding between people who claim to believe in capitalism and people who oppose it. Most people who claim to advocate capitalism are actually proponents of free markets. So am I. In fact, very many anarchists are. In fact, that's one of the reasons why anarchists tend to oppose capitalism — capitalism makes markets less free.

Capitalism is the economic system wherein the means of production are owned by relatively few people who exploit the bulk of society (laborers) for profit. That's put pretty dense, though, and it deserves some unpacking.

In a capitalistic economy, the means of production are owned by relatively few people. These people are the capitalists. The means of production they own could be any of a number of things. They could own land, factories, transports, warehouses, and so forth. The means of production owned is called capital.

Now, for it to be capital in the truest sense, it has to be a source of passive income for the owner. That is, the owner can't be the one producing everything the capital produces. A capitalist's major source of income is profit (which I'll define a bit later), not his own labor. In advanced capitalistic economies (like ours in the United States), the means of production are usually too large or complex to be operated by one person alone anyway. One man cannot run an auto plant. One man cannot run a microprocessor factory. One man cannot operate a major cattle ranch. But, one man — or one corporation — can own an auto plant, a microprocessor factory, or a cattle ranch (or all three). That difference between one man's ability to operate large-scale means of production and his ability to own the same is the entry point for capitalism.

In order to operate his means of production, the capitalist must employ workers. He pays these workers a wage in exchange for their using his means of production. They do not own the means of production — the capitalist does. They do not own what they make with the means of production — the capitalist does. All they get for their labor is their wage, which is determined (like all prices) by the supply of and demand for labor in that industry.

But the produce of the workers in the capitalist's employ can be sold for quite a bit more than the cost of the wages paid to the workers. If it were not so, the capitalist could not afford to house or maintain the means of production. But the difference between the value of the produce and the wages paid to the people who actually produce it must be even higher than the cost of maintenance for the means of production in order for capitalism to occur. That additional measure of difference is profit, and it goes straight into the capitalist's bank account.

Note that in the case of corporate capitalism, the profit winds up in the hands of the various investors. Of course, in a corporation, where the people running the means of production are somewhat more removed from the capitalists who own the means of production, they usually succeed in skimming a good deal of the cream off the top before handing it over to the investors. The state has set up measures to limit their ability to do this to some extent, but the tendency of executives to cheat anonymous investors can never be fully eliminated. In other words, some of the profit in corporate capitalism usually also ends up in the hands of the executives. What's more, the bigger the corporation gets, the more executives it needs to operate it and the more distant it becomes from its investors, resulting in even less profit going to the investors themselves. I'll discuss this more later on.

So let's look at the big picture of capitalism. We have one person sitting in his rocking chair all day with a piece of paper in his hand that says he owns a factory. Meanwhile, we have a hundred people working in the factory making widgets. As a group, they make 8,000 widgets each day. The capitalist sells these widgets (through another employee or group of employees) for $3 each, for a total gross revenue of $24,000 a day. He pays his workers $8,000 a day — that's $80 a day for each of the hundred-man force, or $10 an hour. He pays $8,000 a day for overhead costs — maintaining the machines, keeping water and electricity running in the building, providing air conditioning, keeping M&M's in the candy dish at the receptionist's desk, and so forth. That leaves him with $8,000 profit for the day, which he can use however he pleases.

What did he do for his $8,000 that day? Did he labor? Is he eating his bread by the sweat of his brow? No. That's what the men in the factory were doing. Did he run the factory, participating in the often quite difficult task of coordinating the labor of scores of men working on different aspects of a large project? No. The person he hired to do that was one of the hundred people in the factory (who probably get more than the average $10-an-hour wage). So what did he do? He held the piece of paper the government gave him that said he owned the factory and had the right to pocket those $8,000 at the day's end.

That's the capitalism that anarchists, like me, oppose. The kind of economic system in which a hundred men get half of what they produce so that one man can take the aggregate of the other half from each of them without producing anything. I oppose that kind of system as much as I would oppose bandits riding a circuit through farming villages and taking half the harvest from each village. I oppose that kind of system as much as I would oppose a group of men with guns coming into my community flashing cards with the letters I.R.S. on them and demanding half of what I produce. All these system are inherently immoral and incredibly harmful to our spiritual progression. The Lord intends us to be creators. What incentive does a man have to be a creator if he's in a system where he can either get rich by creating nothing or have the bulk of his creations stolen from him by someone getting rich by creating nothing?

Now one more word about corporations — and the difference between anarchists and most other anti-capitalists. Most anti-capitalists notice the immorality of capitalism, particularly corporate capitalism, and decide that the government should do something about the problem. The single biggest example of this in modern times has been the Soviet Union, which took over ownership of all the means of production of a fairly rich and powerful nation. The problem with that approach is that, rather than eliminating the problem of capitalism, it exacerbates it. The Soviet Union was every bit a capitalistic economy, and an economy practicing corporate capitalism at that. All the capital was held by one big corporation — the Soviet state. And as the largest commercial corporation in history (though China might soon surpass the Soviets' peak if they haven't already), the Soviet Union was subject to all the evils of corporate capitalism to an extreme level. Those who ran the corporation skimmed all the cream off the top of the people's productivity and then helped themselves to most of the milk as well. And that is just what you'd expect from a commercial conglomerate of that size, especially if it ran on an ostensibly non-profit basis. The profit has to go somewhere, and it will go to the people running the whole conglomerate.

The solution to the inherent immorality of capitalism is not the government. As Ronald Reagan put it in his First Inaugural Address, "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." The whole problem with the capitalist system stems from the fact that governments are support capitalism. In fact, governments are necessary in order for capitalism to work. Without a government behind the capitalist's piece of paper, there is no way for him to assert ownership over the produce of a hundred men. Running to the government to solve a problem created and maintained by government is like sticking your mouth to an open fire hydrant to cure you when you take a drink of water and it goes down the wrong pipe. The solution for the immorality of capitalism is to eliminate its roots: government itself. Then, and only then, can capitalism be removed and markets become truly free.

Man's Wisdom or God's Wisdom

"The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God" (1 Corinthians 3:19).

"The foolishness of God is wiser than men" (1 Corinthians 1:25).

Most Latter-day Saints — and indeed most Christians — are accustomed to the idea that man's wisdom is pure folly compared to the wisdom of God. We hear it in our churches and read it in our scriptures over and over again. We learn and we teach that no matter how bright we think we are, the best of our plans are nothing compared to the least of the Lord's. That conceptualization helps us understand just how wise God is, which on the one hand helps us rely on his guidance more easily, and on the other keeps from putting too much faith in our own imperfect designs.

We see God's wisdom most abundantly in his organization of the world and the universe. As the Book of Mormon prophet Lehi spoke of the Lord's plan in organizing the world when he taught that "all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things" (2 Nephi 2:24). As we see the organization of the world, the superiority of God's wisdom over our own becomes obvious. Our finest machines are not nearly so well-designed as the simplest of animals. Our most powerful man-made sources of heat and light are insignificant compared to the sun. Even our most destructive weapons are nothing compared to the destructive power of the earth itself. All our wisdom is as the widow's mite in the treasury of the Lord's wealth of wisdom.

In fact, one of the kinds of problems that people run into most frequently is the kind caused by our own misinformed good intentions. We think, in our limited wisdom, that a particular course of action will improve a situation, so we interfere. Then we find that our interference ended up causing far more harm than good.

A few examples will illustrate easily how our interference with God's design causes problems. Consider Utah Lake, where the introduction of a new fish species to compensate for overfishing the native stock has driven almost all the native species to extinction. Or consider the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, stronger than bacteria we faced before penicillin, due to our having killed of the weakest of their kind to leave only the super-fit to survive (at the same time weakening our own gene pool). Or consider first contacts with unknown tribal cultures in America, Africa, and Australia, where intending to bring the hunter-gatherer tribes the riches of European civilization, many good-hearted cultural diplomats brought devastating diseases instead. We see over and over again a common pattern: man interferes with God's design because he thinks he knows how to improve it and he ends up ruining a system that was far more complex than he had imagined.

The ancient Greeks called this hubris, the special kind of pride in which man thinks he knows better than the gods. A lot of Greek tragedies were written to highlight the dangers of hubris and the sorrow it brings into human lives. Today, we often call the same thing progress. But no matter what we call it, it's still us thinking we're brighter than God. And it still brings the same tragic results.

The amazing thing about this kind of pride, though, is how much it permeates our lives. One area where we see this sort of pride flourish is in the concept of government.

Government, as we know it, is the result of man's efforts in planning how humans will interact with each other.

Now humans, like many animals, are naturally sociable beings. They want to live together in groups and interact with each other. They naturally and innately want to work in groups, to play in groups, to eat in groups, to love in groups, to worship in groups, and so forth. Humans universally, across all cultures, abhor the idea of being forever removed from the joys of associating with some group. In almost all cultures, the worst punishment a group can give a criminal among them is to remove that individual from the group, whether through death, solitary imprisonment, or banishment. Humans naturally have a strong desire to form groups.

That natural desire is part of God's plan. In fact, the basic group of human society — the family (both immediate and extended) — is the direct and obvious result of God's plan.

Somewhere along the line, however, some men decided they were smarter than God. They liked God's design fairly well, but they thought they could make some improvements on it. They thought they should start applying their own wisdom to the task of improving the natural, divinely-appointed desire for humans to interact in societies. The result was, and has been ever since, government.

Government takes our natural sociable desires and forces them into a mold crafted by our own painfully finite wisdom. Such a course always creates unforeseen problems. And since we already feel like the way to solve problems is to apply our own wisdom to them instead of letting nature play out as God designed, we increase the size and power of our governments to tackle the problems that their creation brought about. This vicious cycle continues until governments (that is, the instruments of man's interference in God's design for human society) end up controlling everything and all our happiness is constrained by our own narrow minds instead of being free to roam the wide breadth of God's.

We fool ourselves into believing that without governments, society would break down. But that just isn't true. Society is a natural human impulse. If we got rid of governments, we would undoubtedly continue to suffer the ill effects of their initial creation. But over time, society would resume on a level far better (because it would be according to God's natural design) than anything we have today.

At some point we must recognize that we are not smarter than God. His natural design is far better than what we devise. This is true in all aspects of life, including human society. Planned societies (that is, states) are vastly inferior to natural societies because they are based not on God's wisdom, but on man's. Governments are just another instance of man's hubris. And they bring about the same tragic results.

It's time we stopped trying to lecture God with our wisdom and simply started learning from his.

John Taylor on the Ills of Government

I'd like to examine a portion of a book by John Taylor, an apostle, prophet, and third President of the Church. The book is called The Government of God (I wish I knew a web edition to link to), and it contrasts the governments of men with the way God governs. Elder Taylor wrote the book around 1850, when he was just over 40 years old.

In the book, and in this section, he seems to be advocating a single government for all mankind throughout the world. Now, such a situation would seem to be inimical to anarchism, since it doesn't solve the problem of government itself. But this excerpt, which is quite representative of Elder Taylor's assessment of the problems of human government in general, reveals not only some of the major problems with government that make anarchists oppose it, but also the extent to which leaders of the church have recognized the same problems, attributed those problems to the same source, and proposed roughly the same solution — the abolishment of human government. The divine government that Elder Taylor speaks of in the whole of the book, devoid as it is of all the problems inherent in human governments, so little resembles government as we understand it that it seems almost dishonest to call that divine government by the name of government.

The quotes that follow are all one continuous portion of the book. I have interspersed my own commentary in the text, but in Elder Taylor's book, they would occur as they are written here without interruption or alteration.

If men and nations, instead of being governed by their unruly passions, covetous desires, and ambitious motives, were governed by the pure principles of philanthropy, virtue, purity, justice, and honor, and were under the guidance of a fatherly and intelligent head, directed by that wisdom which governs the universe, and regulates the motions of the planetary systems, there would be no need of so many armies, navies, and police regulations, which are now necessary for the protection of those several nations from the aggressions of each other, and internal factions.

Notice here the explanation Elder Taylor gives for the need for armies and police, the armed forces of the state. They exist to protect the interest of the governments in question. The armies protect the interests of their government from other governments while the police protect the interests of their government from the governed. If the various governments were dismantled (with a true theocracy — rule by God rather than priests, which is hierocracy — to replace them, as described in Revelation 11:15), then there would be no need for armies or police, which exist only to protect the interests of governments competing, on the one hand with other governments and on the other with those they rule, for the "right" to rule the people within a defined area.

But since we have governments, we need armies and police — or at least, the governments do. But what are those armies and police doing? Elder Taylor tells us his view on it:

Let any one examine the position of Europe alone, and he will find this statement abundantly verified. Look at the armies and navies of France and England; and the confusion of Germany, also of Austria, Turkey, Russia and Spain, not to mention many of the smaller nations, and let their armies, their navies, and police be gathered together, and what an abundant host of persons there would be. They would be sufficient to make one of the largest nations in the world! And what are they doing? To use the mildest term, watching each other, as a person would watch a thief for fear of being imposed upon, and robbed, or killed; but generally strolling around as the world's banditti, robbing, plundering, and committing aggressions upon each other; and if they have peace, acquiring it by the sword; and if prevented from aggression and war, it is generally, not that they are governed by just, or virtuous principles, but because they are afraid that aggression might lead to combinations against them which would result in their overthrow and ruin.

There he states it pretty plainly. The armies and police of the world are the world's banditti. To achieve peace, they desolate opponents. The only way they bring justice is through their fear of not being able to get away with acting unjustly. And this is not really because of the individual natures of those men in the military and police forces of the various governments, but because of our system of governance, because of our whole approach to the concept of government. By thinking as we do about government, we convert a large body of men — large enough to constitute a great nation — into bandits and thieves to rob what they can, where they can, when they can.

But the plundering and robbing, the blood and the horror that these great bands of bandits bring us is only part of their cost. Elder Taylor goes on to detail some greater costs than even the violence and terror that we incur by establishing and supporting these robbers.

In the city of Paris alone, at the present time, and its immediate environs, there are one hundred thousand soldiers, besides police to a very great number, not to mention the vast number of custom-house officers and others. Suppose we add to these their families, where they have any, and where they have not, notice the vast amount of prostitution, misery, degradation, and infamy, that such an unnatural state of things produces. I give the above as an example of the whole, but here the navies are not included. I say again, What are these all doing? They do not raise corn to supply the wants of men, nor are they occupied in any useful avocation; but they must live, and their wants must be supplied by the products of the labour of others.

These bandits do not produce the materials that all men need to sustain life, but their lives must be sustained. That means they must live by the fruit of other men's labor. For that to happen, the people must not be able to enjoy the full fruit of their own labor, but the state must send some of their bandits to the producers of the world and take their produce from them at gunpoint so that it can provide for the needs of the whole band. This reduces the producers — the farmers, the clothiers, the builders, and so forth — to slavery and reduces the men in the military and police forces to slave-driving, both degrading occupations for mankind.

Now, notice that Elder Taylor does not fault the individual men in those military and police forces, nor even does he fault the men who direct them. The fault lies in the whole "unnatural state of things," as Elder Taylor puts it. The whole system is unnatural, and that is what brings about all these problems. Men are not naturally meant to be in bondage one to another, but this whole artificial system of states, created by the puny wisdom of man, forces such a complex interweaving of relationships of bondage that the system cannot leave any man in it free from its stain.

And Elder Taylor continues:

There has to be an immense amount of legislation for the accomplishment of this thing, and instead of having one government of righteousness and the world obeying, we have scores of governments, all having to be sustained in regal pomp, to be equal to their neighbouring nations; and all this magnificence and national pride having to be supported by the labour of the people. Again, all these legislatures have to provide immense hosts of men, in the shape of custom-house, excise, and police officers, to carry out their designs, all of whom, and their families, help to increase the burden, till it becomes insupportable.

This wicked system has to expand indefinitely in order to maintain itself. Every action of its hired bandits requires more legislation to extort goods for their support. Every increase in legislation requires more officers to enforce the legislation, who in their turn must be fed by the labor of those who must therefore enjoy even less of the their own produce. The whole system, like any artificial and unnatural system, inevitably becomes unsustainable over time.

Now, notice that if all governments were dissolved in one great government, but that government were based on the same principles as our current governments, the problems would not go away. There might be no need for armies, but the need for police would only increase unless something were done to strike at the root of government as we know it. You have to read the whole book to see it, but when Elder Taylor speaks of "one government of righteousness," he's talking about something very different from everything we think of when we think of government. So don't think Elder Taylor is advocating something like a highly empowered UN. Rather, he is attacking the very foundation of everything we, in our mortal understanding, think of as government.

And the problems of government as we know it simply multiply:

That, together with the unnatural state of society, before referred to, in regard to the situation of the inhabitants of cities and the nations, plunges millions of the human family into a state of hopeless destitution, misery, and ruin, for they are groaning under all these hopeless burdens without having sufficient land to till to meet their demands, and as natural means fail they are obliged to have recourse to those that are unnatural.

This whole unnatural state of things, then makes our ultimate source of productivity, the earth itself, insufficient for our needs. The earth's insufficiency has nothing to do with overpopulation (see D&C 104:17); it is instead caused by this whole approach to government that we all support and encourage. That is what makes the land give less than we seem to need. If instead every man had to live by the fruit of his own labor and every man were free to enjoy the full fruit of his own labor, then earth would be abundant, with enough and to spare. But that kind of abundance depends on our being agents unto ourselves (really, see D&C 104:17). If we are agents unto another man instead of agents unto ourselves, the natural order of things is subverted and the earth's abundance is not properly brought forth.

Elder Taylor discusses one of the more chilling ironies this system brings about:

Hence, in England a great majority of the inhabitants are made slaves of, virtually to supply the wants of the greatest part of the world, and are forced to be their labourers. Thousands of them are immured in immense factories, little less than prisons, groaning under a wearisome, sickening, unhealthy labour; deprived of free, wholesome air; weak and emaciated, not having a sufficiency of the necessaries of life. Thousands more from morning till night are immured in pits, shut out from the light of day, the carol of the birds, and the beauty of nature, sickly and weak, in many instances for want of food; and yet, in the midst of their wretchedness, gloom, and misery, you will sometimes hear them trying to sing in their dungeons and prison-houses, in broken, dying accents,

"Britons never shall be slaves."

For those of who unfamiliar with the song Elder Taylor is referencing here, it is "Rule, Britannia!", a stirring patriotic song of Britain expressing the resolve of the British to be remain free from the rule of other states.

And there's the irony. These wage laborers, spending the bulk of their waking hours in unnatural conditions for a pittance of the value of the produce of their labor (else how would their employers make a profit?), bound by the scarcity-induced poverty just described to their labor, in every way matching or surpassing the sadness of condition known by slaves who truly bear the name (of which there were many in the United States of John Taylor's day), imagine themselves free because of the power of their government. It is their very government that creates the whole situation forcing them into this slavery. A slave is not free simply because his master is free. A slave is a slave. But slaves under modern governments largely support and even cherish the system that enslaves them, supposing that the power of their government makes them somehow more powerful, when in reality it is the power of their government that makes them less powerful. If their government were weaker, they would have far more power.

Elder Taylor gives a further example of this kind of capitalistic exploitation that is brought about by the whole governmental system as we know it:

I will here give, as one example, an iron works that I visited lately in Wales. One of the proprietors informed me that they employed fifteen thousand persons, and paid them £5,000 per week. Most of these people laboured under ground, in the pits, digging for iron ore and coal; the remainder were employed principally about the furnaces, in rolling the iron, &c., at heavy, laborious, fatiguing work. And who were they toiling for? Principally for the Americans and Russians, at that time, to furnish them with railroad iron. And what did they get for their labour? The riches of those countries? No. £5,000 a week among about fifteen thousand persons. I suppose, however, a number of these were boys and girls. The average wages of men was from ten to twelve shillings per week. And this is their pay for that labour; and yet the masters are not to be blamed, that I can learn, for they are forced by competition to this state of things, and by the unnatural, artificial state of society. If they did not do this their workmen must be out of employ, and ten times worse off, if that were possible, than they are now. In the State of Pennsylvania, in America, where the railroads run through coal and iron mines both, they leave them untouched, and come to England for iron to make the rails of, that they cannot afford to make at home, because of higher wages, and an outlet to society, which prevents them from being coerced into bondage. If the world was right, the labour would be done there, and not here, and the labour of carriage saved.

The workers in the Welsh iron works described here are each of them making a third of a pound a week. That would be worth about £25 a week today, or $50 in America — probably close to a dollar an hour. This situation was brought about because British labor was cheaper than labor in Russia and America. There was plenty of iron in those countries, but it was cheaper to hire Britons to extract and process their own iron and then ship it than to hire Americans or Russians to extract and process it right where it was needed.

In school, we were told that this kind of exploitation was because of the laissez-fair economy of the 19th century and that governments helped the workers by establishing minimum wages and worker safety regulations. The government protected the worker from the harsh employers. But what did protection that really cause? Did it end exploitation? For the British, the exploitation became far less extreme, but a visit to India or China today will quickly cure a person of believing that the exploitation has stopped. In 1850, Americans got cheap goods from Britain because labor was so much cheaper there. Today we get cheap goods from Asia, where people are working for less than a dollar a day to supply our wants. The exploitation and slavery of John Taylor's pre-Civil-War times is still going on — it's just hidden by outsourcing.

And it's not the fault of the employers. They have to exploit people if the system is to remain intact. The whole process of exploitation is necessary in order to support the ever-burgeoning growth of states, who are the source of this whole complicated inter-network of bondage. As long as the states remain, they will have to operate by extortion that is always increasing, forcing fewer and fewer people to work harder and harder to support the state's officers, both armed and bureaucratic, thus reducing the productivity of the whole earth. The only thing that has let us continue this exploitative system so long is the technological progress that has dramatically increased our productivity per man-hour.

The solution is simple. Let us not continue to maintain governments as we know them, whose well-being requires this kind of parasitic exploitation that reaches through every level of our society. Let each man labor for his own support and enjoy the full fruit of his own labor. When every man is free to act fully as an agent unto himself, then we will see that the earth is full and there is enough and to spare. We will see an end to war and oppression as we know them. We will see an end to slavery of all kinds. The solution to the problem Elder Taylor outlined so clearly over 150 years ago, a problem that has only worsened since then, is simple.

It is simply anarchy.

How Gentle God's Commands

Perhaps the foremost argument presented against the idea of Mormon Anarchy is the Mormon belief in God's commandments. More than most Christians, Mormons believe that God has issued many commandments which must be followed. Obedience is frequently heavily emphasized by members of the Church of Jesus Christ, and we have a multitude of commandments that seem to demand our obedience. If these commandments are as numerous and as exacting as we so often suppose, then Mormonism and anarchism truly are incompatible.

As a firm believer in both Mormonism and anarchism, I submit to you that these commandments are neither so numerous nor so exacting as we suppose.

First, let it be said that a commandment is only significant to our exaltation if it comes from God. Commandments that come from men but not from God have no bearing on our exaltation. It should be remembered that the Lord told Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove that the corrupt professors of the false churches of the time were characterized in part by the fact that "they teach for doctrines the commandments of men" (JS–H 1:19), and he reminds us that we should "not be seduced by evil spirits, or doctrines of devils, or the commandments of men" (D&C 46:7).

In fact, the Lord has this to say about the whole business of commandments: "I the Lord . . . gave commandments . . . that man should not counsel his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh" (D&C 1:17–19). One of the reasons God gives commandments is so that we won't tell each other what to do or listen to those among us who decide to tell us what to do despite the Lord's commandments. So no matter how numerous or exacting the commandments of men might be, the Lord wants us to ignore them.

That leaves us with the commandments of God. If they are as exacting as we suppose, then anarchism truly is fundamentally incompatible with Mormonism.

So how exacting are the Lord's commandments? The commandments of men — the kind that anarchism opposes — are those commandments that come with a punishment attached for disobedience. Do this or I'll fire you! Do that or I'll fine you! Do this or I'll spank you! Do that or I'll jail you! And for the strongest commandments, Do this or I'll kill you! That's how we issue commandments among one another. An essential part of commandments of this sort is that the person or entity that issues the commandment be the one with the means and wherewithal to carry out the threatened punishment.

Are God's commandments this way? Does he punish us for failing to obey his commandments?

First let's consider the eternal rewards that will be given to those who do good and those who evil. We know from D&C 76 that there are three degrees of glory that will be inherited by almost all of God's children: celestial glory, terrestrial glory, and telestial glory. We read that the telestial glory, which is for the heirs of salvation, surpasses all understanding (verses 88 and 89). But then we read that the terrestrial glory "excels in all things the glory of the telestial" (verse 91). So the telestial glory is more glorious than any of us can understand, and the terrestrial glory is more glorious than that. And then we read the celestial glory "excels in all things", ranking even higher than terrestrial glory (verse 92). So these different kinds of glory, the least of which is more glorious than we can understand, set aside for the heirs of salvation, must be for pretty good people, right? Yes. The least of these glories (which can in no way be considered a punishment) is for "liars, and sorcerers, and adulterers, and whoremongers, and whosoever loves and makes a lie" (verse 103). These people, heirs of salvation, are so good in God's eyes that they will inherit an eternal glory that surpasses all understanding. I don't see the punishment here.

Of course, there is another, non-glorious place for people to wind up after Judgment Day. We can read about it in D&C 88:32–35. The Lord explains that people who cannot abide a celestial glory will receive a terrestrial glory, unless they can't abide a terrestrial glory either, in which case they'll receive a telestial glory. But some people won't be able to abide even a telestial glory. It will be too glorious for them; they won't be able to stand it. What happens to them? Fire and brimstone, right? Not exactly. The Lord says they will be resurrected (or quickened) and then "they shall return again to their own place, to enjoy that which they are willing to receive, because they were not willing to enjoy that which they might have received. For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift? Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift." In other words, they're simply not interested in the glory that's being offered to them, so they get left alone to enjoy themselves in their own place. That's not even punishment, really. That's just the Lord not forcing his idea of happiness down his children's throats. He offers everything he has and they receive as much as they want to receive.

So no one ends up getting punished forever. Some people don't end up with everything God has to offer, but that appears to be because they're not interested in everything he thinks is so fantastic. But what about short-term punishment? D&C 76:106 (along with a bunch of other scriptures, but we're already at Section 76, so) seems to suggest that there will be some time spent in hell for some people before they move on to an eternal reward. Isn't that hell punishment?

Well, hell is certainly bad, but that doesn't make it punishment. It's only punishment if it's inflicted by the one who issued the commandment or by someone associated with him. For example, if I disobey my dentist's orders and drink a gallon of cola every day and never brush my teeth, bad things will happen to my teeth. They'll probably slowly rot away, in fact. But that doesn't mean the dentist is punishing me for my disobedience. He was just telling me what would happen if I didn't do what he suggested. So his orders weren't the kind of orders or commandments that anarchism is opposed to. There was no coercion; there were no threats; there were no ultimatums; there was no force. There was just knowledge about cause and effect as it related to dental health, and my refusal to accept that knowledge. I suffer bad for it, but not punishment. So you can experience bad things happening to you as a result of your own behavior without being punished. If hell is like that, then it wouldn't be punishment.

Joseph Smith talked about the punishment of hell this way: "A man is his own tormentor and his own condemner. Hence the saying, They shall go into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. The torment of disappointment in the mind of man is as exquisite as a lake burning with fire and brimstone. I say, so is the torment of man" (Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith 224).

Harold B. Lee put it like this: "The greatest hell that one can suffer is the burning of one’s conscience. The scriptures say his thoughts will condemn him, he’ll have a bright recollection of all his life (see Alma 12:14; 11:43). . . . Now, when we fail of that highest degree of glory and realize what we’ve lost, there will be a burning of the conscience that will be worse than any physical kind of fire that I assume one could suffer" (Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Harold B. Lee 227).

Both of these modern prophets are saying that the fires of hell are nothing more than the disappointment and burning of conscience we feel when we've done something we regret. God doesn't send us to hell, nor do we send ourselves there in the sense that we choose to disobey whiel knowing that hell is the punishment decreed for disobedience. More truthfully, we create hell for ourselves, a point somewhat reminiscent of Brigham Young's teaching that "if we enjoy a Zion in time or in eternity we must make it for ourselves. . . . all who have a Zion in the eternities of the Gods organized, framed, consolidated, and perfected it themselves, and consequently are entitled to enjoy it" (Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young 112). So whether we end up with a heaven or a hell, it will be because we have made it for ourselves. Just as, if I end up with rotten teeth from drinking too much cola and never brushing, I will have rotted my teeth myself.

So the punishment we receive for disobeying God's commandments is no punishment at all. There is no coercion; there are no threats; there are no ultimatums; there is no force. There is just knowledge about cause and effect as it relates to spiritual health, and our willingness or refusal to accept that knowledge. The commandments of God, then, are just like the commandments of the dentist. They derive their authority not from any threat of force, but simply from greater expertise. That kind of authority is not what anarchism opposes (see An Anarchist FAQ §B.1). So there is nothing incompatible in the Mormon understanding of God's commandments and anarchism.

In fact, I would go further than to say there is nothing incompatible between the two views. The principle behind the commandments of God is that the proper reward for our actions is precisely the natural result of those actions. If we enjoy heaven, it will be because we create a heaven. If we suffer hell, it will be because we create a hell. No artificially imposed reward — just the natural fruit of our own labor. Mormons commonly refer to this principle as the Law of the Harvest: as you sow, so shall you reap.

One of the fundamental principles of anarchism is that the natural wage of labor is its product: that is the basis for anarchists' opposition to things like profit (where an employer gains by giving the laborer less than the product of his labor), rent (where a landlord gains by extorting a portion of a laborer's productivity), taxation (where a government acts as a landlord), and all other forms of robbing a producer of the fruits of his productivity.

Mormons take this principle of anarchism, though receiving it from God rather than from anarchist philosophers (no matter how enlightened the philosophers be), and comprehend its application as eternal. Not only are the natural wages of earthly labor the natural earthly product, but the true and proper eternal reward for righteousness or wickedness is neither more nor less than the natural spiritual product of the same. God's commandments are not only compatible with anarchism — his whole approach to commandments is fundamentally anarchistic.

God's commands are gentle indeed.

What is Anarchy?

Let's define this blog's key term: anarchy.

The worst source you can go to for a definition of anarchy is a dictionary. My favorite dictionary defines anarchy as "a state of lawlessness due to the absence or inefficiency of the supreme power; political disorder." Of course, that's how some people use the word anarchy, but that's not how you'll see it used in the posts on this blog. Anarchy, the way I use it, doesn't really mean lawlessness, and it certainly doesn't mean disorder.

Some people will tell you that anarchy means "an absence of government," but that's not quite the sense of the word I'm using either. I certainly am talking about an absence of government, but we can get rid of all government and all states and even all municipal governing bodies and still fail to have what I mean when I talk about anarchy.

Etymologically, anarchy means something like "an absence of dominion," or "an absence of sovereignty," or "an absence of positions of primacy in terms of power to command." That's a lot closer to what I mean by anarchy.

In an anarchistic society, no one is in a position that permits him to command anyone else. Everyone interacts with one another freely, in a completely uncoerced manner. When one person commands another person, there is always coercion, because implicit in the command is the threat of harm in the event of disobedience. On the schoolyard, we observe such behavior and rightly condemn it as bullying. In other contexts, however, the very same do-what-I-demand-or-I'll-hurt-you behavior is called government, foreign relations, parenting, marriage, school, a job, church, business, or any of myriad other noble-sounding names. But the behavior hasn't changed in any of these contexts. It's still just bullying.

Now, this doesn't mean that things like parenting, marriage, school, industry (in the older sense of that word), or church would be absent from an anarchistic society. What would be absent is the coercion. An anarchist would marry, work (though not, perhaps, in the way most people conceive it today), worship, have children, teach, and learn just as surely as any other human being would. But the anarchist won't introduce coercion into these healthy and natural human activities. He would let them stay healthy and natural.

Anarchy, then, is far more than a political system. Sure, anarchists are opposed to government, but that's just one of many forms in which people control one another, and all of that control over one another is evil and anarchy is opposed to all of it. Anarchy is a principle about how to interact with other people at all levels: in our nations, in our towns, in our homes, in our churches, in our schools, in our workplaces, in our playplaces, in our marketplaces, and in every other area where one person has any kind of involvement with another. All of those interactions and relationships should be free from any kind of power or coercion. That's anarchy.

So as you read the posts in this blog, keep in mind what anarchy means here. You'll see the word a lot and it's important that as you see it, you know what I mean by it. At least half the arguments against anarchy come about because the arguers have two different understandings of how the word is being used. Of course, there are other arguments against anarchy. Usually they're related to uncertainty about how it can be achieved. Those arguments, though, will be dealt with in other posts. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

In the Beginning Was Anarchy

One of the basic teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and indeed one of the key differences between the Church and other religions that profess a belief in Jesus Christ, is that we existed before we were born and we lived with God, who was and is our Father in a spiritual (yet physical, since we reject the notion of non-physical spirits) sense.

When we lived with our Father in heaven, we learned from him and grew to become more like him. That's what he wanted for us. He wanted us to become like him, to have all the happiness that he enjoys. What father, being good, wouldn't want that?

But there were two ways in which we differed from him. First, he had an immortal body of flesh and bones, while we were only spirits. Second, he had developed a lot more spiritual power than we had. He wanted to make it possible for us to have those things as well, so he planned a way for it to work out. He decided to make a world where we could come to receive bodies of flesh and, at the same time, make choices for ourselves, without knowing that he was watching, so we could develop our own spiritual strength independently from his direct influence. Furthermore, since he knew, that in the process of learning to develop our spiritual power, we would make plenty of mistakes that would end up hurting us, he wanted to provide a Savior who could overcome the negative effects of those mistakes so that we could get the benefit of learning without having to live forever with the less desirable results of our time on the learning curve.

All of this is fundamental to the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ, and you can invite any Mormon missionaries into your home and they can confirm all of this.

Now, when our Father first presented his plan for how we could become like him, there were two different people (that we know of) who volunteered to be the Savior that the plan would require. One was Jesus. The other was Lucifer. Jesus wanted to do things the way our Father had suggested, but Lucifer wanted to do things differently: he wanted to make sure that no one ever chose to not develop his or her own spiritual strength because he wanted glory and power. The Father's plan left open the possibility of individuals not choosing to become the kind of people they would have to be to be like our Father — it was entirely up to each person to decide how far he or she wanted to go on that path. Lucifer was going to force everyone to go the distance, whether they wanted to or not. And the reason he wanted that was so that he could be more powerful. Let me make that clearer: he wanted to limit our freedom so that he could become more powerful.

A lot of our brothers and sisters liked Lucifer's suggestion. In fact, one third of our whole family sided with him, while the other two thirds sided with Jesus and the Father. We fought over it, and those who sided with Lucifer left God and heaven and never got bodies of flesh. The rest of us (that is, everyone who's ever been born or will be born) sided with Jesus.

You can read about this showdown in the Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrine and Covenants:

Moses 4:1–4

1 AND I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning, and he came before me, saying--Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.

2 But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me--Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever.

3 Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down;

4 And he became Satan, yea, even the devil, the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will, even as many as would not hearken unto my voice.

D&C 29:36–38

36 And it came to pass that Adam, being tempted of the devil--for, behold, the devil was before Adam, for he rebelled against me, saying, Give me thine honor, which is my power; and also a third part of the hosts of heaven turned he away from me because of their agency;

37 And they were thrust down, and thus came the devil and his angels;

38 And, behold, there is a place prepared for them from the beginning, which place is hell.

Now, notice that the crux of the whole fight between God and the devil is that the devil wants people to be controlled so that he can have more power while God wants people to be free so that they can have more power (as much as he himself has, in fact). That's what the beginning of the argument between the two was, and as you can see from Moses 4:4, the devil's drive to enslave and exploit mankind is still the defining characteristic of the great battle between Good and Evil.

What's more, you can see from this that the devil uses lies to accomplish this enslavement. That's his primary weapon and tool of exploitation. One lie that these texts mention is the lie that if we are controlled instead of being left free, it will be for our own benefit: "not one soul shall be lost." But that's a lie — it can't happen. People can't develop the kind of spiritual strength our Father has if they are controlled; and if they are not controlled, then those who don't want to develop that kind of strength will be free not to. Lucifer's campaign promise that "not one soul shall be lost" was a total lie. Yet how many times are such lies alarmingly effective in persuading men to sell themselves into slavery?

So, from the Mormon perspective, the whole cosmic war between Good and Evil is all about freedom on the one hand and slavery on the other. As the Book of Mormon prophet Lehi put it, "men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself." (2 Nephi 2:27). That's what life is all about — the struggle between God and freedom on the one hand and Satan and bondage on the other.

The foundation of the Mormon faith, then, is that anarchy is God's way, and fighting against anarchy was an idea the devil came up with to get more power. And coming up with that idea was precisely what made him the devil.