The necessity of the state is undoubtedly one of the worst myths that still persists in the public mind.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/to-promote-peace-you-must-fight-statism/

by Oscar Grau

U.S.-Zionist imperialism in the Middle East is far from coming to an end. The Hamas attack of October 7 on Israel triggered a highly murderous phase in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The subsequent retaliation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and their killing tens of thousands of innocents and continual provocations has elevated the possibility of a soon-to-come war between Israel and Iran, with the additional chance of involving the United States. To make matters worse, the American relationship with Israel in all these decades has made possible an unfortunate tolerance of the Gazan genocide to many conservatives.

The American ability to produce humanitarian disasters, either with NATO or the IDF, is anything but new, proving over and over again that freedom and human rights do not matter to the U.S. government, which has supported the slaughter of innocents in the Middle East or done the killing itself. Besides, the creation of many more millions of refugees has provoked social turmoil in several European countries suffering from subsidized immigration. And yet, all this is actually assisted by the political leadership of these European countries. Meanwhile, in the Russia-Ukraine war, every time the U.S. government and its allies help President Volodymyr Zelensky with arms and money, they contribute to the death of ever more people by fueling a war provoked by NATO.

The necessity of the state is undoubtedly one of the worst myths that still persists in the public mind. Who demands the manufacture of weapons capable of simultaneously killing thousands of people? Who forces or convinces thousands of people to dress in uniform and shoot others? Who builds military bases all over the world? These situations would be impossible without the state. While technology is always advancing, it begins as a neutral tool, and only becomes a factor when the state’s ends are mass weapons of war.

It’s because of ideology that wars in the past century have been more devastating and total than those of previous eras. These destructive ideas include democratic nationalism, the fiat-money system, the abandonment of old ways in warfare, and the increasingly disregarded methodological individualism embodied in the concept of justice. In reality, democratic nationalism became one of the most important causes of the real Hobbesian war of all against all manifested in World War II, which destroyed tranquility, subjected the national economy of several countries to the prerequisites of war, and annihilated the lives of millions. So it is certainly not enough for states to murder or oppress their own subject populations; indeed, which crimes do states pursue and punish most intensely in their own territorial monopolies? Economist Murray Rothbard responds:

“The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of person and property, but dangers to its own contentment: for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, conspiracy to overthrow the government.”

In the meantime, a new arms race came into being post-war. States competed in the development, innovation, and growth of their armies and weapons, qualitatively and quantitatively, making them more powerful and more effective. The race is materially based on the unique ability of states to externalize their costs. As inflation, taxation, and the manipulation of money and credit helps states, the richer they become, the easier it is to afford the race, which underpins the enrichment of the military-industrial complex and solidifies the preparation for war. And although not all states are involved with the same eagerness, all are involved by extension and definition in this arms race, equipping their military forces and purchasing on the global arms market. In fact, industries specializing in technology for mass destruction are established and thrive because states are their only financiers, diverting market resources to militaristic and warmongering initiatives. The military-industrial complex as we know it is not the result of free-market capitalism, but of statism—its intervention, its central banks, and so on.

Linked to the understanding of justice as an individual matter, private defense removes the need or diminishes incentives for military-sized weapons aimed at large destruction rather than individual execution. In the private world, where we have not yet forgotten how to live in peace, virtually no person or security company would ever consider the manufacture and use of highly destructive weapons. The need to avoid collateral damage, the concern for personal justice and defense, the search for profitability, and the private and voluntary financing of customers wanting to live in peace, happen naturally. Indeed, human tendency toward cooperation is so obvious that it suffices to realize that interpersonal conflict is actually rare and not a predominant feature of social life.

True, there will always be a global arms market, since defense and justice are not needs that appear with states, but exist independently. In reality, neither requires the existence of states. But unlike states, which do not compete or worry about the loss of voluntary customers, private security and justice services have incentives to be managed in a way that is not only economically profitable, but also peaceful. They cannot externalize the cost of their aggression or negligence as states do, nor do they have the legal means to systematically commit crimes and escape unscathed from the consequences or risks common among private individuals. Thus, private security and justice services lead people to care more about peace and the rights of others than is possible under statist terms.

The approach to justice and defense as an exclusively individual and private matter is precisely something that statism has no way of emulating.

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