Stoicism and Anarchism
From “The Fundamentals of Voluntaryism” by Carl Watner, via Wendy McElroy:
Common sense and reason tell us that nothing can be right by legislative enactment if it is not already right by nature. Epictetus, the Stoic, urged men to defy tryants in such a way as to cast doubt on the necessity of government itself. “If the government directed them to do something that their reason opposed, they were to defy the government. If it told them to do what their reason would have told them to do anyway, they did not need a government.” As Lysander Spooner pointed out, “all legislation is an absurdity, a usurpation, and a crime.” Just as we do not require a State to dictate what is right or wrong in growing food, manufacturing textiles, or in steel-making, we do not need a government to dictate standards and procedures in any field of endeavor. “In spite of the legislature, the snow will fall when the sun is in Capricorn, and the flowers will bloom when it is in Cancer.”
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