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Stoicism and Anarchism

September 03, 2011 By: John Kindley Category: Lysander Spooner, Stoics, Wendy McElroy

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.”

. . .

It is a fact of human nature that the only person who can think with your brain is you. neither can a person be compelled to do anything against his or her will, for each person is ultimately responsible for his or her own actions. Governments try to terrorize individuals into submitting to tyranny by grabbing their bodies as hostages, trying to destroy their spirits. This strategy is not successful against the person who harbors the Stoic attitude toward life, and who refuses to allow pain to disturb the equanimity of his or her mind, and the exercise of reason. A government might destroy one’s body or property, but it cannot injure one’s philosophy of life. Voluntaryists share with the Stoics the belief that their ideas will not necessarily change the world, nevertheless, some of them may be inclined—like the Stoics—to become martyrs, when necessary. They would rather suffer death or harm than lose their integrity because their integrity is worth more to them than their existence.

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