"There is a great, basic contradiction in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individualism--the inviolate sanctity of man's soul, and the salvation of one's soul as one's first concern and highest goal; this means one's ego and the integrity of one's ego. But when it came to the next question, a code of ethics to observe for the salvation of one's soul--(this means: what must one do in actual practice in order to save one's soul?)--Jesus (or perhaps His interpreters) gave men a code of altruism, that is, a code which told them that in order to save one's soul, one must love or help or live for others. This means, the subordination of one's soul (or ego) to the wish-es, desires or needs of others, which means the subordination of one's soul to the souls of others.

"This is a contradiction that cannot be resolved. This is why men have never succeeded in applying Christianity in practice, while they have preached it in theory for two thousand years. The reason of their failure was not men's natural depravity or hypocrisy, which is the superficial (and vicious) explanation usually given. The reason is that a contradiction cannot be made to work. That is why the history of Christianity has been a continuous civil war both literally (between sects and nations), and spiritually (within each man's soul).

"The solution? We have a choice. Either we accept the basic principle of Jesus—the pre-eminence of one's own soul—and define a new code of ethics consistent with it (a code of Individualism). Or we accept altruism and the basic principle which it implies—the conception of man as a sacrificial animal, whose purpose is service to others, to the herd (which is what you may see in Europe right now [at the end of a World War]—and which is certainly not what Jesus intended)....

"One may approach my philosophy from either one of two angles. If we assume that man was created by God, then man must live on earth according to his nature and to the rational faculty which God gave him as his distinguishing attribute and his only means of survival. Therefore, accepting an Individualist code of ethics, one would carry out God’s will and be a truly religious and moral person. Or we may assume that there is no God, that all we know is that we are men, we are here on earth, and it is up to us to enjoy it or to destroy ourselves. Then we still must live according to our nature and our rational faculty, and accept the highest perfection of man (defined by our reason) as our standard of morality. My code of ethics will apply and will hold in either case."

~ Ayn Rand in a letter to a fan, July 9, 1946, collected in Ayn Rand Letters

Sometimes, we suffer on account of terrible circumstances such as living in a war zone or getting diagnosed with a grave illness at a young age. At other times, however, a person may be unhappy for no apparent reason. There is occasionally something diffuse and ill-defined about human frustration, an amorphous grey force that precludes the possibility o…

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From the Vault. By PFS member David Dürr. Translated from David Dürr, “Bürgerlicher Anarchismus: Das Abendland schwimmt koedukativ,” eigentümlich frei (05 März 2017). Eigentümlich frei (“peculiarly free”) is a German magazine edited by André F. Lichtschlag. Other Dürr articles at eigentümlich frei.

Bourgeois Anarchism: Minimal States and Pickpockets—Even Petty Criminals Are Criminals

by David Dürr

Are you a minimal statist? Are you a convinced libertarian who grants the state not a single bit more than looking after the protection of people from mutual violations of life, body, and property, and absolutely nothing else? Not even traffic rules on the road, and certainly no social programs for the poor and weak? This is, of course, not because you do not care about chaos on the streets or the plight of poor and weak fellow human beings, but because you know that order and prosperity establish themselves much better without state intervention. So, are you someone who knows exactly that the state is not the solution but the problem, and therefore must be reduced to an absolute minimum—a minimal statist, in fact?

Perhaps I am addressing quite a few readers and authors of *eigentümlich frei* here; people I genuinely like, of whom I know that human freedom is a sincere concern to them, and that not a few even find it difficult to grant the state anything at all. I know from some of my friends that they would prefer to abolish the state altogether right away, but they say that this is unfortunately not possible; for a bare minimum of basic stability in society, a minimal state is simply needed.

With all due sympathy for these freedom-lovers: Is it not precisely the bare minimum of basic stability in a society that is better left in the hands of the people than with a small but nonetheless illegitimate monopolist?

The state is not a fundamental problem because it does this or that, or because it does so much and ever more, but because through its actions it encroaches upon the respective private spheres of individual human beings, and does so simply out of its own absolute power.

Taxes, to name a prominent example, it takes “unconditionally”—that is, regardless of whether those affected have voluntarily committed to them, or whether they have caused any damage and now have to compensate for it. There is, therefore, a lack of inner justification and thus ultimately of lawfulness, regardless of whether it is a head tax of 100 euros or a 60 percent income tax—just as a small pickpocketing in the crowd at the marketplace with a loot of ten euros is no less unlawful than a professionally and cinematically executed bank robbery with a loot of 100 million. Of course, the pickpocket can expect a lighter sentence if caught than the gang of professional bank robbers, but they are both criminal.

Now, proponents of the small state will resist this comparison with the small pickpocket: The legitimacy of the minimal state, they argue, lies not in the fact that it steals only a little, but in the fact that it is not theft at all. Unlike the pickpocket, who uses the stolen money merely for himself, the state deploys it in the interest of all. And this is where the difference between the cautiously acting minimal state and the bloated maximal state comes into play: while the latter presumes to decide over everything and anything in people’s lives, the former restricts itself to the absolute minimum needed to protect people from mutual encroachments.

That is then rather like the excuse of the caught pickpocket: He doesn’t need the money for himself, but to protect the people in the marketplace from mutual encroachments; after all, it’s absolutely swarming with pickpockets there!

***

Related

• Kinsella, Hoppe, Dürr, et al. The Universal Principles of Liberty
• Hoppe, Reflections on the Origin and the Stability of the State
• ——, Reflections on State and War
• Kinsella, The Nature of the State and Why Libertarians Hate It
• ——, What It Means To Be an Anarcho-Capitalist
• ——, What Libertarianism Is