Individual Liberty - Evernote

coerce the peaceful non-co-operator is to violate equality of liberty. If my neighbor
believes in co-operation and I do not, and if he has liberty to choose to co-operate
while I have no liberty to choose not to co-operate, then there is no equality of liberty
between us. Mr. Levy's position is analogous to that of a man who should propose to
despoil certain individuals of peacefully and honestly acquired wealth on the ground
that such spoliation is necessary in order that wealth may be at the maximum. Of
course Mr. Levy would answer to this that the hypothesis is absurd, and that the
maximum could not be so attained; but he clearly would have to admit, if pressed,
that, even if it could, the end is not important enough to justify such means. To be
logical he must make the same admission regarding his own proposition.
But after all, is the hypothesis any more absurd in the one case than in the other? I
think not. It seems to me just as impossible to attain the maximum of liberty by
depriving people of their liberty as to attain the maximum of wealth by depriving
people of their wealth. In fact, it seems to me that in both cases the means is
absolutely destructive of the end. Mr. Levy wishes to restrict the functions of
government; now, the compulsory co-operation that he advocates is the chief obstacle
in the way of such restriction. To be sure, government restricted by the removal of this
obstacle would no longer be government, as Mr. Levy is "quick-witted enough to see"
(to return the compliment which he pays the Anarchists). But what of that? It would
still be a power for preventing those invasive acts which the people are practically
agreed in wanting to prevent. If it should attempt to go beyond this, it would be
promptly checked by a diminution of the supplies. The power to cut off the supplies is
the most effective weapon against tyranny. To say, as Mr. Levy does, that taxation
must be coextensive with government" is not the proper way to put it. It is
government (or, rather, the State) that must and will be coextensive with taxation.
When compulsory taxation is abolished, there will be no State, and the defensive
institution that will succeed it will be steadily deterred from becoming an invasive
institution through fear that the voluntary contributions will fall off. This constant
motive for a voluntary defensive institution to keep itself trimmed down to the
popular demand is itself the best possible safeguard against the bugbear of
multitudinous rival political agencies which seems to haunt Mr. Levy. He says that the
voluntary taxationists are victims of an illusion. The charge might be made against
himself with much more reason.
My chief interest in Mr. Levy's article, however, is excited by his valid criticism of
those Individualists who accept voluntary taxation. but stop short, or think they stop
short, of Anarchism.
Liberty and Taxation
The power of taxation, being the most vital one to the State, naturally was a
prominent subject in Liberty's discussions. Mr. F. W. Read, in London Jus, attacked
the position of Anarchism on this point and was thus answered by Mr. Tucker:
The idea that the voluntary taxationist objects to the State precisely because it does
not rest on contract, and wishes to substitute contract for it, is strictly correct, and I
am glad to see (for the first time, if my memory serves me) an opponent grasp it. But
Mr. Read obscures his statement by his previous remark that the proposal of voluntary