Can We Be Moral Without the State?
by Benjamin Studebaker
I noticed an interesting consequence of the moral theory I outlined yesterday–if it’s true, it is not possible to be moral beyond a limited scope in the absence of a state. Let me explain what I mean.So yesterday, I argued that there were three levels of morality:
- The Human Interest
- The State Interest
- The Individual Interest
The higher level governs the level below it. At present, we have no superstate to represent the human interest, so states exist in anarchy, but individuals are governed by states. So while individuals can pursue their own interests, they can only do so to the extent that the state determines that said individual pursuits do not conflict with a wider social interest.
What I find interesting is how very different the moral obligations of states seem to be because there is no superstate. Because there exists a state of international anarchy, it is unreasonable to expect states to care about the welfare of other states to their own detriment. States are not expected to self-sacrifice for each other, but to pursue their own interests. You can call this an amoral state of affairs or a moral state of affairs characterised by egoism on the part of the states, the point is that there is no wider concern for human welfare. The United States doesn’t decide whether or not to intervene in country X based on how an intervention affects country X; it decides on the basis of how intervening affects itself. If the United States were to act in the human interest, it would start giving away its wealth to poor parts of the world or intervening in foreign affairs purely for altruistic reasons. With the exception of a small minority on the far left, most of us agree that the US is not morally bound to do that. A state is not morally required to act as though it is a superstate; it is allowed to prioritise its own citizens and its own needs over the needs of other people and other states.
Even the liberal institutionalists, who think that anarchy need not be violent and that states can learn to get along, expect cooperation not because doing so is moral but because doing so enriches the cooperating states through trade. It is still, fundamentally, an amoral or egoist system.
So if we shift these same principles to an imaginary state of anarchy in which people live on their own, with no state or powerful regulating social institution, it looks like we are plunged into a completely amoral or egoist condition without the state. If without the superstate it is okay for states to look out for themselves and take advantage of other states, then without the state it is okay for individuals to look out for themselves and take advantage of others. It looks as if the existence of the state not only enforces a moral concern for the social interest among individuals, it looks as if its very existence is crucial for there to be a wider morality than the egoist one.
This sounds strange to me. If we woke up tomorrow and there was no government at all, suddenly it would be okay for people to rape each other, kill each other, take each other’s stuff, and so on? Desire satisfaction can become the only priority for people, and we have to just say that that’s okay?
Well, after trying to find a way out of it, I have to concede that yeah, we do. Here’s why.
Without the state, we are not responsible to anything. People often say that we are responsible to ourselves through our consciences, but they have made a basic metaphysical error. An individual cannot be divided against himself. Plato is wrong when he says that the soul is divided into a “ruling” reason and a “desiring” emotion. While reason and emotion can be talked about in the abstract as though they are distinct, in real people they are not separated out but mixed together. If I have a strong desire to do something, I will rationalise that desire with my reasoning. If I have a strong logical belief about something, I will come to desire that belief’s reality. We may sometimes be unsure of what we think or how we feel, but this is not because the different views are separate forces, but because we simply have not finished processing our priorities and coming out with what we desire. More difficult problems take longer to solve. In the end, I believe or desire or do something not with a part of my being, but with all of it.
So what is the conscience? Are we really judging ourselves? We cannot do that, because when we do a thing, we do it with our whole being. No, what we are really doing is comparing what we are doing to what is generally thought to be moral–what is generally thought to be in the social interest. So if I steal something, I do not feel bad because I have some intrinsic knowledge of “stealing is bad”, but because I am comparing myself to the social standard I have been introduced to. Many children take things from stores when they are very young because they simply are not aware that this behaviour is considered by those around them not to be in the social interest, to be wrong. The guilt they feel is the result of being informed of this social judgement; it does not come from within. It is not what is truly moral that we feel bad about violating, it is the social norms introduced to us. Now, if we live in a good society, our social norms will more or less correspond to what is truly moral, and so it can be hard to see the distinction. But if, say, you were brought up in 1830’s South Carolina and born the son or daughter of a slave-holding plantation holder, you would likely not feel any tinge of guilt at all about being a slave-holder despite the immense immorality of being in that position. The social norms you will have learned will not have corresponded with the true social interest. If you do a bad thing that is thought to be good by your community, you’re default reaction will be to think it good and feel no guilt. If you do a good thing that is thought to be bad by your community, you’re default reaction will be to think it bad and feel bad. It’s the connection between the norm and what we do that makes us feel good or bad, not whether or not what we actually do is good or bad. For this reason, our moral intuitions cannot be trusted–they reflect our cultural norms, not metaphysical truths. People are born with no moral knowledge at all; they learn from the community.
There is no community without the state, because communities are social structures, and social structures are not maintained without power relations, and where there are power relations, there is a state. No one will be taught social norms without the state or some primitive substitute for it (the family, the tribe, the village, or what have you).
If there’s no state and I decide to start taking people captive and torturing them for my own amusement, I am making the world a worse place in which to live, but I am not acting immorally, because I do not have any social ethical standard to which to compare my behaviour. Morality requires responsibility, and those who are ignorant through no fault of their own cannot be held responsible. It is the state’s job to create that standard and to come as close as possible to matching that standard with what is truly in the social interest. States that do a bad job of this too often are bad states, and if we live in a bad state and can think of a better structure that’s more likely to produce this harmony between our social norms and what is actually good for us, then we are obliged to overthrow the current state and replace it with the new one.
Now, what about god? Say we accept, for the sake of argument, that everyone is born with an idea of god. It is nonetheless demonstrably true that the nature of this idea varies widely. People who are born in some parts of the world have the Hindu idea of god, in other parts the Christian, in other parts the Muslim, and so on. And thinking fourth-dimensionally, people in the past had other ideas as well–the Greek, or the Norse, or what have you. In each of these permutations, the moral views said to belong to the god or gods in question differed. It therefore stands to reason that even if everyone were born a deist, no one is born a specific type of theist. The moral views we attribute to deities cannot come from them but must come from our communities and social structures. They represent social norms that correspond in varying degrees to the true social interest, and are in no way different from the social norms we get from our parents, our schools, and, ultimately, our states. Given that our states usually are the ones emphasising, to some degree or another, religious belief, whether it be a particular religion or simply permitting our parents to teach us whatever they like, even social norms derived from religion are ultimately from the state.
Thankfully, true anarchy is very nearly impossible. The breakdown of the state typically just results in smaller primitive state structures through the family or through various local institutions, and even were there to be a true interval of anarchy, people would hold onto the social norms taught to them by the previous regime until new institutions arose, though they would do so without any ability to expect reward for following them or punishment for failing to do so beyond what the stateless individuals around them would inflict. It becomes in the self-interest to act as one would in a state in anarchy to the extent that the vestigial social norms left by the departed state continue to influence the way individuals expect to be treated by one another during the anarchy. Of course, given enough time, and a true lack of any state institutions at all (even parenting, in the absence of all else, is a primitive state institution), those vestigial social norms would fail to be replaced in the next generation and would rot away. The penalties or rewards inflicted by one’s fellows for not following or following the old moral system would decrease to the point at which the egoist thing to do would be entirely divorced from the social interest altogether. But of course, such a condition can’t happen as long as parents act as states unto their children, which I imagine is more or less a permanent facet of human nature even in the most chaotic of political climates. The states may be very small, and the communal interests very narrowly defined (the family interest, the tribal interest, the city-state interest, or what have you), but it is always in man’s nature to create states and to aspire to moral goals larger than himself. Even the egoist senses ultimately, on some level, that it is in his own interest to be governed by some greater interest than himself, and that is perhaps the very best element in the human character.
Benjamin Studebaker 
“It is not what is truly moral that we feel bad about violating, it is the social norms introduced to us.”
how can you identify a “true” morality if your saying that morals are only devised based whatever is the social norm?
The social interest consists in whatever behaviour is actually conducive to people living well together in the community; the moral norms are the set of moral beliefs taught to people by the state (or primitive state, as the case may be). The latter is some approximation of the former, but the two are not synonymous–the degree to which norms match reality is the degree to which the state is effective. The key thing is that when most citizens talk about what is “right”, they mean what is deemed by society popularly to be right, not what is actually conducive to human flourishing within the community.
So your saying that what is conducive to human flourishing is not up for debate? i can’t seem to take your statement any other way.
cause in your statement you are identifying some practices that are “truly moral” .. i assume the word “truly” means “without question”
also in your statement you are trying to identify a “true” morality but then you go ahead and ask “how can you identify a “true” morality if your saying that morals are only devised based whatever is the social norm?” You are in affect questioning your previous statement.
No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that there is objectively some set of conditions that is optimal for human flourishing, but we do not know precisely what those conditions are. The state does its best to estimate it and conduct policies to send us in that direction. The difference between what the state thinks is conducive to human flourishing and whatever is actually correct is the difference between our moral norms and the true morality. There is plenty of scope for disagreement and debate–we may never know exactly what is conducive for human flourishing, but we are targeting a real objective condition set, not merely one of any number of subjective equally valid alternatives. Now, you might rightly ask how any of us can try to find the true morality when our moral convictions are themselves socially constructed by moral norms, and that is a huge obstacle that makes the process very difficult. The best we can do is question our moral assumptions and intuitions and be hesitant to accept moral positions that are popular without some level of scepticism.
So your saying you would go out and rape someone if there wasn’t a state? I think your thinking too much.
I wouldn’t rape someone because I have been indoctrinated with a moral revulsion of rape by both the state and primitive state structures (like my parents). If however I grew up in a society that took no issue with rape or considered it good or permissible, I would have no way of knowing it to be against the social interest on that basis alone. Perhaps I, as someone who was philosophically inclined, might realise that it was not conducive to flourishing, just as some philosophically inclined Romans realised that slavery was not conducive to flourishing, but the great majority of the people do not do their own moral reasoning and simply follow the moral norms taught to them by the state institutions, and those people would indeed go out and rape people if they were raised in a culture in which that was deemed acceptable or in which there was no imposition of morality upon them at all due to the absence of a state.
How do you know something is wrong and immoral…not because of social norms…but because your hurting someone else either mentally, physically, or emotionally. Did you ever consider that?
In every case in which you and I are familiar with human nature, some amount of state moral normative influence exists, whether it comes from parents, tribes, or the state education system. Even despite those institutions, we regularly find individuals who take no moral issue at all with harming others if they have not been taught to perceive a given harm as immoral. Reference the Aztecs, the Romans, and so on.
I disagree. I think morals are human and when we violate those morals it means we are violating humanity somehow. of course the state governs morality in some ways but, where did the state get the morals….they are after all just a group of individuals just like the society they govern except with more power. moral relativism has been largely debunked…the people who stick to it are just people who “hate to judge” even though they love to judge the people who are judging…..the fact is female genital mutilation in arab countries is immoral…whether the arab states or certain sectors of arab society disagree is irrelevant. its a practice which strips a woman of her dignity and destroys her humanity in profound ways…we believe now that the romans were immoral, in let’s say, having human gladiators as slaves, but how did we gradually evolve that sense of morality? how did new states gradually evolve that sense of morality? your putting the state before the moral sensibilities of the people who encompass that state, and i’m not talking about the citizens…i’m talking about the people who actually govern that state. I don’t see how you can logically do that?
Also you saying morality is completely subjective….and we can’t hold people responsible for things they do wrong. if that is true then why have humans progressed in building societies which have better and better systems of law and order? why didn’t we just stay the way we were 2,000 or 3,000 years ago? again you can’t say the state. because how did the people who make up the state determine that we need to make up that progression?
Morality ultimately derives from what was perceived by early people to be useful for them to flourish in a state of cooperation. It has evolved from there. What is useful is not subjective; it is objective. That said, we do not always know what is useful, and we often apply moral principles in areas in which they are not useful or no longer useful, because our adherence is often to the principles themselves rather than their reason for being–serving human purposes. Human beings created morality as a social device to live better. It is not natural or inherent in us.
I totally abhor moral relativism and subjectivism, they are the denial of any objective way of doing things that is useful. Usefulness is not a matter of taste about which all opinions are equally true or equally valid; it is a matter of fact. It is a matter of fact about which it is sometimes difficult to make claims with confidence, but that does not make it subjective, just difficult. Moral norms differ in different cultures, times, and countries, but they are not at all equally right or equally valid. Some moral norms are much closer to the true morality than others.
Moral norms evolve via a combination of philosophy and dialectics. Take, for instance, the evolution of beliefs concerning equality. The Greeks and Romans believed in an inherently unequal world in which different people had different talents and social roles. Such a structure is what their states believed to be moral–to be useful for the purposes of human flourishing. Along comes Jesus–Jesus is a philosopher. He rejects the moral norms and devises a different morality that espouses equality of all people regardless of rank, function, skill, class, etc. These ideas are contradictory. So what was the resolution? Divine right of kings evolved to merge Jesus with Rome, to justify hierarchy and Christianity at the same time. But that relationship breaks down when it becomes clear that the king is mortal and not fundamentally different–when he rules badly. So in cases of bad rule, the tension flairs up again, and you get more pushes for more equal systems of government–like democracy. All changes in moral norms result from individual philosophers introducing new ideas. These ideas are adopted by a state on the grounds that the state thinks that the idea is conducive to better society, one in which people flourish more. The new ideas conflict with whatever ideas existed prior to them, and there is either a reconciliation (if both or neither idea has some merit) or a victory of one idea over the other (when one idea is fundamentally more useful than the other).
You ignore the question of how morals came about, how a sense of right and wrong began…social norms could not have existed before a sense of right and wrong…therefore you can not judge whether a person is being moral or not just based on their social norms. Your relativist argument falls apart.
“Now, if we live in a good society, our social norms will more or less correspond to what is truly moral, and so it can be hard to see the distinction.”
So which came first, the good society….or the good individuals in that society?
“It’s the connection between the norm and what we do that makes us feel good or bad, not whether or not what we actually do is good or bad.”
So why was there a struggle for civil rights then? how did some people born into a society that discriminated against Blacks, a society that did not see that position as immoral, come to decide that it was immoral? Your statement fails to take that into account.
Morality exists to enable people to cooperate successfully with each other under communal conditions. As Hume argues, social justice derives ultimately from social usefulness. It cannot precede communal conditions; it cannot precede the state. There is no reason to have moral positions in a social vacuum. If one never met another person, one would have no moral feelings toward other people at all. Thankfully, we are all born to parents, and the affection we feel for our parents is the beginning of moral indoctrination, but were that absent, I see no reason to assume a moral presence would exist of its own accord. What would it refer itself to? The animals? The plants? We kill those all the time.
I would theorise that the civil rights movement is a consequence of World War II. One cannot simultaneously condemn to one’s people the racist policies of the Nazi regime while promoting racist policies at home. A contradiction within moral norms demands that one view or the other triumph, because it is not logically possible to simultaneously believe contradictory things. So either the Nazis are to be exonerated, or the institutionalised racism condemned, and, to my joy, we went with the latter. Societies shift in their moral attitudes when elements of their morality are in conflict with one another and those conflicts are highlighted by some specific incident. In the absence of such an incident, moral disputes lie dormant.
The state can never be moral. Theft and violence are wrong.
Why?