Time Stamps:
(0:00) Intro
(3:06) Part I: Reemergent Nations
(13:10) Part II: The Crucial Flaw of Wilsonian Foreign Policy
(22:40) Part III: Rethinking Secession
(31:53) Part IV: The Anarcho-Capitalist Model
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Murray Rothbard observed that while it was useful to embark on an analysis between the individual and the nation-state, another unit of analysis had been widely neglected: the genuine nation.
This theme was expounded throughout his 1994 essay, Nations By Consent.
Part I: Reemergent Nations
The essay begins:
Libertarians tend to focus on two important units of analysis: the individual and the state. And yet, one of the most dramatic and significant events of our time has been the reemergence—with a bang—in the last five years of a third and much neglected aspect of the real world, the "nation."
As the Soviet Union collapsed, Rothbard witnessed “a corollary of the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, a vivid and startlingly swift decomposition of the centralized State or alleged nation-State into its constituent nationalities.”
In other words, the Evil Empire consisted of an artificial consolidation that demanded brute force to remain entwined. Even so, these nationalities retained distinct undercurrents, and formally recovered their own ways of life. “The genuine nation, or nationality,” Rothbard continues, “has made a dramatic reappearance on the world stage.”
And for our purposes, how is this genuine nation defined?
Rothbard emphatically distinguished the nation from the state, however vexing the question may be.
The "nation" cannot be precisely defined; it is a complex and varying constellation of different forms of communities, languages, ethnic groups, or religions. Some nations or nationalities, such as the Slovenes, are both a separate ethnic group and a language; others, such as the warring groups in Bosnia, are the same ethnic group whose language is the same but who differ in the form of alphabet, and who clash fiercely on religion (the Eastern Orthodox Serbs, the Catholic Croats, and the Bosnian Muslims, who, to make matters more complicated, were originally champions of the Manichaean Bogomil heresy).
The question of nationality is made more complex by the interplay of objectively existing reality and subjective perceptions.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade caused many Americans to approach their framework from a nationalist lense to one that considers politics at the state level to be of primary importance on the abortion issue.
No longer is the question about who the President would nominate as a Supreme Court justice, and what their true intentions were about upholding precedent or returning the issue to the states, where it bears the most constitutional grounding.
Beyond the United States, several developments have shaken and stirred around the world.
Great Britain's Prime Minister, Boris Johnson stepped down following a series of scandals and a loss in public confidence. Long-time Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated, leaving the course of Indo-Pacific affairs less certain. Protesters in Sri Lanka booted their President out of the country, who resigned by email and fled to Singapore.
The Dutch Parliament enacted radical nitrogen emissions reductions against its farmers, resulting in a massive backlash and protest. As the term “agflation” was coined, other EU member-states are similarly bound to feel the heat.
Each of these events demonstrate the instability and chaos of national politics.
Here are some points worth retaining as we delve into the next section of Nations By Consent:
When the Soviet Union crumbled, the world witnessed “a vivid and startlingly swift decomposition of the centralized State or alleged nation-State into its constituent nationalities.”
The “nation” is “not the same thing as the state.”
Even within North America, several distinct “nations” can be identified, and these internal distinctions can greatly enhance our perspective and analysis.
With this foundation established, we shall proceed to the next section in Murray Rothbard's essay, Nations By Consent in view of the 21st century
Part II: The Crucial Flaw of Wilsonian Foreign Policy
Rothbard begins this section with the observation that a Wilsonian view of nationhood and collective security sets the stage for large-scale conflict.
The problem of the nation has been aggravated in the twentieth century by the overriding influence of Wilsonianism on US and world-wide foreign policy. I refer not to the idea of “national self-determination,” observed mainly in the breach after World War I, but to the concept of “collective security against aggression.” The fatal flaw in this seductive concept is that it treats nation-states by an analogy with individual aggressors, with the “world community” in the guise of a cop-on-the-corner.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, NATO has only seeked to expand. Perhaps its merits had substance while the USSR was at its peak in power and its goal of expanding communism was obtainable. Yet, since the end of the Cold War, the member states of NATO have nearly doubled.
Following a short-lived peace with post-Soviet Russia, NATO has added the following nations to its allied arsenal:
Albania (2009)
Bulgaria (2004)
Croatia (2009)
Czech Republic (1999)
Estonia (2004)
Finland (2023)
Hungary (1999)
Latvia (2004)
Lithuania (2004)
Montenegro (2017)
North Macedonia (2020)
Poland (1999)
Romania (2004)
Slovakia (2004)
Slovania (2004)
Old Playbook, New Troubles
More than likely, NATO expansionism was a major factor in provoking the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While there may not have been serious plans to invite Ukraine into NATO, actions taken in 2014 amounted to regime change against a neighboring state that had grown friendlier to Russia in the lead-up to the so-called Maidan Revolution. Democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted and replaced by the preferred Ukrainian leadership handpicked by US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt.
In other troubling news, some are taking the notions of a “scorched earth” warfare tactic to new heights. Briefly defined, this is when military operations are focused on destroying infrastructure that an enemy may rely on. The destruction of the Nordstream pipeline, for example.
According to the great military philosopher, Sun Tsu, it's an absolutely senseless endeavor to destroy infrastructure of so much value. What are you then fighting for if the spoils are destroyed in the process?
A sitting member of Congress has proposed blowing up Tiawan's TSMC semiconductor fabrication plant in response to an invasion by China. That would be Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA).
Author and reporter Brandon Weichert explains:
His logic makes sense in a certain Strangelovian way: if Beijing thinks the Americans will destroy this factory that is essential for creating nearly 90 percent of the world’s computer chips to prevent China from gaining control of it, China might be deterred from trying to take the island.
After all, China, like the rest of the world, requires access to those computer chips for their economy, military, and overall society to function.
But that holds true for every advanced nation in the West, including the United States. How much mutually-assured destruction can we afford.
The Absurdity of “Territorial Integrity”
Rothbard explains a fairly obvious theoretical distinction between individuals and nations, and the folly of ignoring its absurdity:
It is absurd to designate every nation-state, with its self-proclaimed boundary as it exists at any one time, as somehow right and sacrosanct, each with its “territorial integrity” to remain as spotless and unbreached as your or my bodily person or private property. Invariably, of course, these boundaries have been acquired by force and violence, or by interstate agreement above and beyond the heads of the inhabitants on the spot, and invariably these boundaries shift a great deal over time in ways that make proclamations of “territorial integrity” truly ludicrous.
This “territorial integrity” canard not only calls for trouble internationally, but also, the will of self-government of the territory's inhabitants.
Rothbard points to the situation in Yugoslavia near the end of his life to exemplify the Orwellian shift of established voices across the West proclaiming the “territorial integrity” of that nation, and denouncing any secessionist movements. The same Establishment went from embracing the Serbs to denouncing them for alleged “aggression” against the “territorial integrity” of “Bosnia.”
Much of the mess in the Balkans was caused by then-Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic, whose nationalistic crusades served as an affront to several autonomous states within the region. This resulted in four major wars - all of which Milosevic lost - and fractured the peace within the regions.
“Balkanization” is a strange pejorative when it was a nationalistic military effort to enforce a false unity that inevitably led to a harsh fracturing between the peoples inhabiting the region. The moral of this historical episode is not one favorable to a forced unity or a regional conquest, but a forewarning against meddling with the nationhood freely established of each party.
Rothbard viewed the United States as particularly unfit for the job of playing the world's policeman. Americans, he said, have adopted nationalism in a world cop framework only as a relatively recent phenomenon, and have “no historical memory” of conflicts that face other nations. This, Rothbard observed, was “a deadly mix.”
Part III: Rethinking Secession
In this section, we encounter Rothbard’s case for secession to justly reflect the will of a territory's inhabitants.
Genuine Nations
Secession has made substantial headway into political discourse as a result of the discontent that has sprouted various populist movements and a seemingly overheated political environment, where differences are not always cordial, and notions of pluralism have been given the scoff.
From fairly successful campaigns - such as Catalonia and Brexit - to longshot proposals, like Texit, Calexit, and the State of Jefferson - the issue of secession has gained momentum and serves as a shift in the Overton Window to the annoyance of an establishment that once casually dismissed “national divorce” as a fringe issue that made for fodder when the time came to attack a bogeyman.
But if this has actually taken the talking heads for a spin, what has motivated the desire for such a desire?
Murray Rothbard expressed the desired objective “to transform existing nation-states into national entities whose boundaries could be called just,” in the same way he saw private property boundaries. This would ultimately “decompose existing coercive nation-states into genuine nations, or nations by consent.”
To Rothbard, secession was not only defensible, but desirable.
In short, every group, every nationality, should be allowed to secede from any nation-state and to join any other nation-state that agrees to have it. That simple reform would go a long way toward establishing nations by consent. The Scots, if they want to, should be allowed by the English to leave the United Kingdom, and to become independent, and even to join a Gaelic Confederation, if the constituents so desire.
But, one may ask, what about the trade barriers this might create? As Rothbard saw it, more independent and smaller nations meant each barrier had less power. Likewise, fiat monetary systems would have less illusory power over the public.
For it would be far more difficult to sow the illusion of self-sufficiency if the slogan were “Buy North Dakotan” or even “Buy 56th Street” than it now is to convince the public to “Buy American.” Similarly, “Down with South Dakota,” or a fortiori, “Down with 55th Street,” would be a more difficult sell than spreading fear or hatred of the Japanese. Similarly, the absurdities and the unfortunate consequences of fiat paper money would be far more evident if each province or each neighborhood or street block were to print its own currency. A more decentralized world would be far more likely to turn to sound market commodities, such as gold or silver, for its money.
A Revolution From What?
In the United States, it is all too typical of secessionist propositions to be shouted down with the worst possible suspicions. A Twitter war may even have secession equated with the return of the worst features of the Old South. Needless to say, this is nonsense only worthy of ridicule.
The ability of a territory to withdraw from an overbearing government is precisely what made the American experiment possible. The Declaration of Independence was largely inspired by Virginia's Declaration of Rights, in which George Mason declares:
That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration. And that, when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.
Thomas Jefferson echoed this sentiment in the Declaration:
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Not only are these passages relevant to the breakaway from Great Britain, the United States was declared internally to consist of “free and independent states.” King George would recognize each state within the Union as an equal to Great Britain in terms of sovereignty.
The Articles of Confederation declares in Section II:
Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.
In the US Constitution, this principle was embodied in the Tenth Amendment.
It would be a mistake to confine the advocacy of secession to the American South. In 1803, seeing the Louisiana Purchase as a threat to their power and interests, the New England Federalists began threatening to secede from the Union. The New England Federalist Party also considered secession in 1814 at the Hartford Convention in response to James Madison's mercantilism and the War of 1812.
Who Will Pay the Debt?
Now that we have established both the theoretical and historical basis of secession, it's imperative to explore its practicality. With varying degrees of sincerity, the issue of debt is brought up by skeptics of secession.
While a dissolution is often bound to be a process full of uncertainty and contention, Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute points to the Czech-Slovak Split as a successful model to consider.
Perhaps the "ideal" national split is the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992, which was a case of a "highly integrated" federal state peacefully negotiating a separation into two new sovereign states. Although negotiations were often tense, both sides did eventually agree to a plan of dividing assets and debts "generally based on relative population and location." That is, debts were allocated based largely on a 2:1 ratio, with Czechs being the more populous group. However, many aspects of the negotiations were problematic. Both Czech and Slovak activists contended they were being exploited by the other side. The Slovaks, who were outnumbered by the wealthier Czechs, often felt that the Czechs received an unfair advantage because the outgoing federation's assets tended to be concentrated in Czech areas. Ultimately, however, negotiations concluded peacefully.
Part IV: The Anarcho-Capitalist Model
Murray Rothbard presents the “pure anarcho-capitalist model” as a theoretical guidepost for desired outcomes, even when working within a statist framework. Simply put, “that no land areas, no square footage in the world, shall remain ‘public’; every square foot of land area, be they streets, squares, or neighborhoods, is privatized.”
But even here, Rothbard seems to face credible dissent from fellow market anarchist Roderick T. Long, who splits the difference between “public property” controlled by the “organized public” - thus, an organized state as represented by government officials - and by the “unorganized public” - thus, “property that the public at large was deemed to have a right of access to, but without any presumption that government would be involved in the matter at all.”
Take, for example, the proprietary communities open to the general public for commerce, as expounded upon by Spencer MacCallum. But Long furthers his case, stressing that “Lockeans… typically hold that individuals have a property right to any goods that they receive by voluntary transfer from their legitimate owners.”
Consider a village near a lake. It is common for the villagers to walk down to the lake to go fishing. In the early days of the community it's hard to get to the lake because of all the bushes and fallen branches in the way. But over time, the way is cleared and a path forms—not through any centrally coordinated effort, but simply as a result of all the individuals walking that way day after day.
The cleared path is the product of labor—not any individual's labor, but of all of them together. If one villager decided to take advantage of the now-created path by setting up a gate and charging tolls, he would be violating the collective property right that the villagers together have earned.
These examples may seek to enhance - rather than detract - Rothbard’s proposal when properly weighed. The semantics involved should by now be properly sorted out by the distinctions Long has provided, and both would presumably find this theoretical amendment worth contemplating.
It may be disputed, however, that the “collective property right” of the villagers is subject to denial or recognition by the private individual owners of the properties the path was created on. After all, their labor was presumably tied to the resources of another property owner. Whether that work was done in vain ultimately rests on the property owners' decisions. Each portion of the path is ultimately a “secondary claim” similar to a sandcastle at a privately-owned beach.
Long offers several other proposals that follow Lockean recognition, but likewise, they must reckon with claims of individual property ownership.
The presumed goal of a political philosophy is to avoid and resolve forseable conflicts. A property rights system aims to establish coherent boundaries and avoid a situation with competing rights claims. If this situation should arise, its theories and axioms should shed light on which claim holds the most weight.
For example, Stefan Kinsella has written and spoken extensively against “intellectual property rights” and their conflicts with tangible, material property claims.
Like intellectual property, Long's “unorganized public property” - for as helpful as the distinction aims to be - finds itself divorced from the Lockean model, instead of serving to expand it.
In addition to Long's argument, Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalist model contributed to the inspiration of Robert Murphy's market anarchist blueprint, Chaos Theory, as well as Hans Hermann-Hoppe's vision of covenantal societies in Democracy: The God That Failed.
Camp of the Saints
As the Cold War came to a close, it was revealed that ethnic Russians were encouraged to emigrate to Estonia and Latvia by Joseph Stalin with the intent of destroying their languages and cultures. For Rothbard, it was the “Camp of the Saints” problem coming to life, in reference to Jean Raspail’s novel under that title, in which the author envisions the entire population of India moving into France.
If life imitated art in ways that were no longer deemed absurd, it was time for Rothbard to reconsider his views on immigration. As he put it, “[a]s cultural and welfare-state problems have intensified, it became impossible to dismiss Raspail’s concerns any longer.”
Previously, we examined the relationship between culture and property in The Uninvited Caretaker, which was largely an outgrowth of Rothbard’s conclusions on immigration, as stated in this essay.
Culture is not property, strictly speaking. However, it can be expressed and codified in contract. The private sphere of society consists of a large body of contracts for every resident among the population. This would satisfy the assumption that culture is intertwined with the legal system.
Language is also not strictly a matter of private property, but bears significant status in the interpretation of law. This extends to practically every legal school of thought, as judges may explore the meaning of language employed from the time a law is written to its modern usage.
Both culture and language consist of norms and customs of social recognition. They are the end products of peaceful association, voluntary cooperation, and spontaneous order. As demonstrated here, both extend significantly into the legal system, and it would be foolish to assume otherwise.
Thus, with or without directly codifying culture and language into a legal theory, these subjects will still have a place in society, even in the “thin-libertarian” proposal of a social order strictly defined by private property.
Enclaves and Exclaves
Rothbard was awe-inspired to witness the decomposition of Yugoslavia into its constituent nationalities, but recognized Bosnia's potential for conflict. His solution: further decentralization.
But this of course will result in a large number of enclaves, parts of nations surrounded by other nations. How can this be solved? In the first place, the enclave/exclave problem exists right now.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a landlocked region in Armenia that continues to face ongoing blockades due to its residing territory. Fateful as this situation was, and still is, Rothbard confidently insisted privatization would lead to much-needed access rights coming to fruition.
Under total privatization, of course, these problems would disappear. Nowadays, no one in the U.S. buys land without making sure that his title to the land is clear; in the same way, in a fully privatized world, access rights would obviously be a crucial part of land ownership. In such a world, then, Karabakh property owners would make sure that they had purchased access rights through an Azeri land corridor.
Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute wrote an article critical of public accommodation laws, largely highlighting the historical tendency of marginalized ethnic groups to use enclaves to build tight-knit communities in order to launch their prosperity.
Rather than blindly credit the government for their advancements, McMaken stresses the pivotal role of the parallel economy:
Does anyone seriously believe that Japanese-Americans attained higher levels of income and social-economic status than whites because Congress mandated that private businesses seat them at lunch counters? A far more believable explanation is that the roots of success of Japanese-American entrepreneurs existed long before the 1960s. This was all done, by the way, in spite of widespread government restrictions on these activities. Private discrimination was hardly the largest problem facing Japanese-Americans in the 20th century.
Similarly, with Latino groups, poverty alleviation was accelerated not by mandates that shopkeepers serve coffee to Mexican-Americans. Far more likely is the fact that, impelled by refusals to provide services by some Anglos, Mexican-American entrepreneurs built up their own social and economic institutions which — like Goya Foods — grew beyond the bounds of their own ethnic groups over time.
Citizenship and Voting Rights
Rothbard viewed the modern Anglo-American model of automatic citizenship as a grave flaw in a society where such citizenship status confers a right to vote. Such a system “clearly invites welfare immigration by expectant parents… whose babies, if born on American soil, automatically become citizens and therefore entitle themselves and their parents to permanent welfare payments and free medical care.”
The French system, in contrast, requires one to be born to a citizen to obtain automatic citizenship, and therefore “is far closer to the idea of a nation-by-consent.”
In a fully privatized society as Rothbard envisioned, voting would mostly be reserved to matters of corporations, joint-stock companies, and various private clubs. If dissatisfied with the direction of such a club, the freedom to leave and join another was a great virtue to be embraced. More privatization and decentralization ultimately negated the supposed importance of voting in such a society.
This vision understandably leaves the Rothbardian underwhelmed by the touting of “democracy” and “voting rights” in the present system.
In the modern world, democracy or voting is only important either to join in or ratify the use of the government to control others, or to use it as a way of preventing one's self or one's group from being controlled. Voting, however, is at best, an inefficient instrument for self-defense, and it is far better to replace it by breaking up central government power altogether.
Written Installments:
See Also:
Original Essay:
Nations By Consent by Murray Rothbard
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