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Essentials of Panarchism

by Michael S. Rozeff
by Michael S.
Rozeff

Panarchism is a
new political philosophy that builds upon and extends the core
concept of consent of the governed, which goes back primarily to
John Locke. Consent of the governed is a concept that permeated
revolutionary America. It appears in Article 6 of the Virginia
Bill of Rights. It appears in the Essex
Result. Benjamin Franklin wrote "In free governments the rulers
are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns." The
Declaration of Independence asserts that "Governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed."

Panarchism
proposes a comprehensive extension of liberty to the consensual
choice of government itself, in form and content. It proposes
government by consent for any persons who arrange such government
for themselves. Conversely, it proposes that a government has no
authority over any persons who do not consent to it.

Panarchy is a
condition of human relations in which each person is at liberty to
choose his own social and political governance without being
coerced. Panarchy means that persons may enter into and exit from
social and political relations freely. It means that government
exists only with the consent and by the consent of the
governed.

Panarchism has
new conceptions of what a people who are governed, a government, and
consent mean. These give rise to a new conception of the
nonterritorial State and revised ideas about sovereignty and
authority. By viewing government as nonterritorial, panarchism
reorients the movement for liberty away from destroying the
governments that others may prefer and toward obtaining the
governments that each of us may prefer.

Free persons in
a free society already practice a degree of panarchy. By individual
consent, they associate with those whom they wish to associate with
(and who wish to associate with them), and they do not associate
with others. By choice, they vary their associations by time, place,
duration, and other dimensions. They choose companions, places to
live, workplaces, clubs, and churches on the basis of individual
consent rendered in a noncoercive social context. Free persons form
consensual organizations, associations, and groups. They form
themselves into sub-societies and "peoples," which are groups of
persons that, via individual consent, willingly aggregate on various
grounds and interests. In doing so, they create multiple coexisting
forms of governance whose basis is not territorial (although it may
optionally be so) but relational.

Panarchism
proposes that panarchy be extended to government (or functions of
government) in the same way that it is already present in society.
Let persons be free to form peoples and to choose their own forms of
government.

Why? Because
consent today is too limited to allow a meaningful sovereignty of
people. Because the rulers have become the sovereign and the people
their servants. Because complex systems of voting and parties have
diluted consent to the vanishing point. Because would-be peoples are
thwarted from forming. Liberty does not mean a vote for one of two
parties that runs a single monopoly government. It means active
consent over the very form, as well as the content, of one's
governing relations.

Why panarchism?
Because in today's governing relations, we find ourselves living
under distant States and governments whose form is not of our
choosing. Because the planet is blanketed with States and
governments that too often deliver injustice, insecurity, disorder,
waste, misery, death, and destruction, as States and governments
historically have done. Because States and governments focus and
amplify power, using it for purposes that many of us do not believe
in. And because governments today legitimate and encourage
contentious struggles for domination where one group's gains is
another group's loss, and where the struggles absorb more and more
resources and divert energy from productive to unproductive
uses.

The liberty
that is basic to panarchy promises a better way of life, by
extending to each of us the capacity to engage in the social and
political relations of our own choosing in accord with our own
beliefs. Since persons will not freely consent to governments whose
decisions in the main leave them, by their own estimation, worse
off, the free choice of government will provide the kind of
check-and-balance on government failures and misdeeds that is a
critical missing element of today's political
arrangements.

Panarchy
envisages many possible societies and sub-societies across a land,
region, or province. There need not be a single sovereign authority
that imposes law on all, unless it happens to be by consent. In
panarchy, multiple and diverse sources of self-chosen sovereignty
coexist side-by-side, each finding its source of legitimacy from the
consent of those who are willing to place themselves within a
particular set of governing relations. People freely place
themselves within multiple non-territorial governing
associations, as contrasted with finding themselves assigned
by authorities on a geographical basis.

The American
revolutionaries blazed a trail toward nonterritorial government when
they called for consent of the governed, but they simultaneously
veered away from that trail. Just as they skirted the slavery
question, they skirted the issues of what constituted a people, a
legitimate government, consent, and secession. Article 14 of the
Virginia Declaration of Rights sought
"to maintain Virginia's sovereignty over its restless, far-flung
western counties." It proclaimed
"That the people have a right to uniform government; and, therefore,
that no government separate from, or independent of the government
of Virginia, ought to be erected or established within the limits
thereof." This particular territorial idea of government was
justified by a false appeal to a mythical right to uniform
government, in order to prevent the formation of West Virginia. Some
85 years later, West Virginia, which for decades had many sound
reasons not to be governed by Richmond, finally seceded from
Virginia.

Little has
changed. Despite hundreds of breakaway and secession movements
worldwide, the territorial notion of government has not changed.
Indeed, many such movements themselves view government as
territorial. American federalism has become nationalism. Governments
of today are making societies over, based upon claims of legitimate
authority that are less rooted in consent than in territorial claims
of rulership.

The idea of
government needs to be severed from the idea of the territorial
State and from the notion that the government of such a State is all
that government is or can be. Since the State is single,
territorial, and coercive, such an idea views government as single,
territorial, and coercive. The territorial idea supports States in
place. It empties consent of all real meaning and replaces it by the
machinations of meaningless votes, party politics, lobbying,
redistricting, power, and campaign money flows. The territorial idea
of government without consent dooms mankind to living without one of
the most basic liberties, which is the liberty to choose one's
government.

It is a mistake
to identify government as the executive and administrative means of
the monopoly State. When those who are pro-State do this, it leaves
little or no room for those who do not consent and wish to live by
their own forms of government. When those who are anti-State do
this, they become anti-government, a position that does not allow
those who want various forms of their own government to exercise
their choices.

Government is
the social coordination of human personal interactions. To the
extent that human beings interact with one another, government is
thus inescapable. Advocates of no government, unless they eschew all
social interaction, can no more live without government than can
statists. But the necessity of government does not imply that
government must be nonconsensual and territorial. We have an
alternative to living under a single territorial State that makes
and enforces all sorts of rules, for all of us, all the time.
Panarchy is that alternative.

We ourselves
govern a vast range of human activities by consent,
nonterritorially, and without the State. This was historically and
is currently the case. Persons within human societies create
governance from varied and multiple sources that include moral and
ethical codes, custom, bodies of judge-discovered law, rules,
principles, manners, religion, pacts, agreements, understandings,
and contracts, as well as through a variety of instruments,
institutions, and organizations that include family, associations,
churches, schools, corporations, and business firms. Society, in
this sense, which is really many interpenetrating and diverse
societies, already reflects a high degree of panarchy. Societies
everywhere already employ panarchy as a beneficial principle of
social organization and order.

Panarchism
proposes extending panarchy further. It stands for a world in which
people live by the governing relations of their choice while abiding
by the decisions of their neighbors to live by theirs. A society
with such liberty will hold together in the same ways that societies
have always held together: through a complex network of shared
values, beliefs, ways, language, and other commonalities that are
put to work through self-interest that is expressed in individual,
associational, and cooperative endeavors. It will hold together
better than today's societies because the nonconsensual government
that fertilizes today's constant political and economic battles,
rebellions, and civil wars will have been reduced.

Different
people understand freedom and liberty in different ways, and even
when they agree, they place different values on liberty. One woman
may choose to labor for another for a wage, while another may regard
wage-labor as slavery. One man may allow himself to be inducted into
an army, while another may look upon the draft as slavery. These
different ideas of good and bad government can coexist in panarchy.
Liberty and government are not at mutually exclusive poles.
Abolishing government per se does not bring liberty for all.
Abolishing government and replacing it with one's own personal
vision of liberty does not bring liberty for all. Liberty for all
entails the capacity for all to choose their own governments. In
panarchy, men and women are free to be unfree (in the eyes of
others) to any desired degree. They may enter into many different
kinds of governing relations. This sets panarchy apart from
political conceptions that deny them the choice of State and
government. Panarchists do not attempt to smash the governments
others want. They deny no one the freedom to be unfree. However,
they deny others (and their States and governments) the freedom to
make them unfree.

Once we open up
our thinking on the question of what government is, we can get away
from the idea of "a government" and "the government." Government is
a set of functions that can be identified. Change is not a question
of today's government or none. There are all sorts of intermediate
possibilities.

National
governments have absorbed major functions such as old age security,
aid to the indigent, and health care from civil society and local
government. They have done so via complex majority rules and voting
procedures that circumvented consent of the governed. Governments
across the world often suppress minorities of many kinds. The
imposition of nation-wide rules discriminates against and suppresses
all those who do not consent and who do not want their government to
handle certain critical issues. Medicare, for example, involves a
taking and a wealth transfer. This kind of program could become
nonterritorial and consensual. Mr. K can subscribe to a plan and
belong to a government that deducts from his wages, while Mr. J need
not. They can be neighbors and do this.

Many of today's government functions can
remain in place for those who want them while making them voluntary
for those who do not. The idea in these cases is not to end
government but make it consensual. Vast amounts of regulation of
labor relations, energy, education, health, and welfare are such
that one neighbor can live without certain rules even if his
neighbor wants them. Instead of attempting to take Medicare away or
attempting to persuade voters to vote it down, which plays the game
of accepting monopoly and territorial government, panarchism goes at
the problem of lack of consent and unjust powers of government in a
different way. Let those who want Medicare have it; let those who
don't withdraw. Panarchism seizes the moral high ground. Why should
those who don't want Medicare be impressed into it by those who do?
Isn't this like making everyone belong to the same church? How can
there be consent of the governed when we are herded, whether we like
it or not, into programs that affect our lives in major
ways?

Coordination
problems involving human interaction are not going to disappear. The
reform of government even where coordination issues are not at issue
may well be difficult. Panarchism does not deny these difficulties.
It sets out a just and peaceful destination that can be achieved
peaceably, which is a future of reform in which the State abandons
its territorial claims. This may happen little by little. It may
happen by degrees. It may happen partially and gradually, or it may
happen by leaps. Consensual and nonconsensual government are likely
to continue to exist alongside one another for some time. Reforms,
small and large, are unpredictable. They are for people themselves
to advance and accomplish. Every step that people take, peaceful and
nonaggressive, toward devising and living by their own government is
a step toward more complete panarchy and greater liberty.

The helpful
comments of Adam Knott and John Zube are gratefully acknowledged,
but all errors herein are solely mine.

June 1, 2009

Michael S. Rozeff [send him mail] is a retired
Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New
York.

Copyright © 2009 by
LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly
granted, provided full credit is given.

Michael S.
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