Tory anarchism celebrates privilege… The goal is to spread privilege to everyone, not try to limit those who already have it.
In the last two posts, I've outlined the essence of Tory anarchism and how to achieve it. But questions remain. Namely, what makes this kind of anarchism "Tory," and isn't that a contradiction in terms? Indeed, traditional left-leaning anarchists will not approve of my use of the word. They'll call it thinly-veiled "anarcho-capitalism," which isn't anarchist at all, according to them.
And while leftists and neo-liberals are not wrong to find parallels between Tory anarchism and the libertarian anarchism of Murray Rothbard (both emphasize the importance of private property, while left-leaning anarchists decry property as exploitative), there are some notable differences. Over the next few posts, I'll outline what these differences are. But first, some history.
What is a Canadian? What is the Canadian identity? In The Once and Future Canadian Democracy, Canadian scholar Janet Ajzenstat critiques our modern concept of being Canadian (YouTuber J.J. McCullough makes a similar argument). Canadians, unlike Americans, aren't supposed to be for the proliferation of guns. We're supposed to favour strong gun control laws so only the "experts" have access to weapons.
Writes Ajzenstat,
We've got a one-size national identity that doesn't fit all our citizens. Consider the matter of gun registration... We "naturally" shrink from carrying guns. It follows that true Canadians will favour gun control as a matter of course. It's in keeping with our identity. But think! What about those opposed? Are we supposed to regard them as less than fully Canadian? Shall we say that they don't quite measure up in the Canadian identity stakes? It's one thing to lose a debate in the legislative arena. It happens all the time. It's part of living in a liberal democracy – but it's another thing to have one's national identity called in question.
Ajzenstat worries that the confines of the debate are shrinking. She writes,
We've come to think that there are some subjects from which the loyal Canadian should avert her thoughts. There are some policy options she should not embrace. We laugh at the United States for its belief that certain attitudes and policies are unAmerican. We tell ourselves that we have no category labelled "un-Canadian." How wrong we are.
Indeed, spend some time with the average Canadian, and you'll soon discover our taboo subjects. You won't find enthusiastic opinions suggesting that multiculturalism is a failed experiment, that more guns equals less crime, or that private health care is superior to bureaucratic state systems. Nor are they often met with civil debate. We'll accuse you of holding "American" values.
But Canada wasn't founded by "Tory socialists" who decried the "individualist" American revolution. Loyalty to the Crown didn't make you a sucker for anti-Enlightenment ideals. The United Empire Loyalists were liberals in the classical sense. The first thing they did when arriving north of the 49th was to demand the same thing the American Revolutionaries had – the rights of Englishmen.
Parliament as a Means to Resolving Conflict
The entire purpose of Parliament and the English common law is to avoid and resolve social conflicts. Most of us have a self-interest in preventing conflict. We want to focus on building and creating. But disputes happen. As well, trespassers, thieves, and murderers exist. Enforcement of laws and social norms is needed to prevent social breakdown and decay. Unravelling the modern legal system to its core essentials is a challenging task. So it's best to start with history and go from there. I'll only dwell a little bit on this.
Local councils and assemblies have their origins in Anglo-Saxon England. They were crude but effective at retaining a sense of order after the Roman Empire. Later, in the 13th century, King Henry III faced financial difficulties. This led to the "Model Parliament" in 1295, which included clergy, nobles, and commoners. Later, Edward I regularly summoned parliaments, laying the foundation for a representative assembly. By Edward III in the 14th century, Commons and Lords formalized their meeting structures. Here, we find a familiar structure: Parliament consisting of the monarch, the House of Lords (nobility and clergy) and the House of Commons (commoners). That's not to say history is one smooth process. Wars and political instability affected Parliament throughout the centuries—most notably the English Civil War.
Alongside the power plays between the Crown and Parliament is the development of the English common law. Courts evolved from settling disputes among the people. After the Norman Conquest, a royal court travelled with the King. The King's courts expanded and eventually became common law courts distinct from ecclesiastical and local feudal courts. More courts arose - shire, manorial, urban, mercantile, exchequer, chancery, etc. If there was a dispute, there was a market for resolution. Judges travelled to different regions to hear cases. A profession of legal experts began playing more prominent roles. We called them lawyers. Rules of law began to formalize.
In 1215, the Magna Carta was signed. This limited the King's powers and established legal principles. The Magna Carta still represents the idea that the law applies to everyone – including the Crown.
Nobody is above the law. But what is the law? If Parliament and the common law are rooted in avoiding and resolving conflicts by enforcing norms – what is the root of conflicts? And that answer is almost always scarcity. If everything was abundant, including space and time, where would we find conflict? What would there be to argue about? You might think we'd invent something new, and you're probably right, but what is the root of social conflict throughout history and in the modern age?
What can it be other than scarcity? There's not enough of everything to go around for everyone. Some places (like Canada) are blessed with natural resources, while others (like Singapore) rely on human ingenuity to get what they want. Others, like Russia or America, use military means.
Is Private Property Just?
Private property is part of the solution. Individual minds are sovereign and thus have private property rights in their body and of their labour. While leftists talk about a "labour theory of value," here we are talking about a labour theory of property.
Three Canadian professors (Tom Flanagan, Christopher Alcantara, and Andre Le Dressay) wrote a 2010 book called Beyond the Indian Act: Restoring Aboriginal Property Rights. In it, they speculate that we can find the foundation of private property in biology.
Richard Dawkins introduced the concept of an extended phenotype in his 1982 book of the same name. The idea is that an organism's traits result from the interaction of its genes with the environment. This goes beyond an organism's body to external objects. Beavers create dams, spiders make webs, and birds build nests. They manipulate the physical environment and appropriate natural resources and forcefully defend their creations.
Extending this logic to human beings, private property is not a convention, legal, or social construct. Ancient people secured resources to build shelters and craft tools to survive and ultimately thrive in this world. We are, after all, naked, hairless apes without our clothing and tools. Even leftists will agree that people are justified in securing personal property.
The problem stems from a distinction many leftists make that Tory anarchists do not. They believe personal and private property are separate categories of things. But this presupposition is supported by neither evidence nor logic. Of the a priori truths describing peaceful coexistence and human action, no distinction exists.
Consider the following thought experiment.
Say it's the period between nomadic tribes and the first farmers. Somewhere in modern-day Turkey, there’s a field with large obsidian rocks protruding from the ground. For centuries, hunter-gatherer tribes have used this field of obsidian rock to make tools and weapons. But around 10,000 years ago, a more advanced society of humans emerges.
This new tribe might not have settled down completely, but they're more advanced than the others. For example, they have a larger vocabulary. They've been collecting seeds and harvesting plants in various locations. They have imaginations. This tribe realizes, upon discovering the obsidian rock field, that they should settle permanently. With its near-endless supply of base material for weapons and tools, this obsidian rock becomes the tribe's private property. Anyone entering the area wanting some obsidian must have something to trade with the homesteading tribe.
The question is: Did this tribe steal the land from the nomadic hunter-gatherers using the rock as a non-owned source, like how one breathes the air or drinks from a stream? According to the leftists, yes. One must consider the unintended consequences of private ownership, like exclusivity. But they have yet to offer plausible alternatives.
In the libertarian anarchy of Murray Rothbard (or the classical liberalism of John Locke), one must "mix their labour" with the resource to become its proper owner. But is this a predominately Western worldview? Is it universal for all people? If one declares an empty plot of land theirs, must one farm or build a home to own it? Or is one permitted to keep a vacant plot wild while retaining their property ownership?
In the obsidian example, we could make the case that the homesteading tribe are not real private property owners but aggressors, even precursors to States, for they violated the natural property rights of the hunter-gatherer tribes using the rock for generations. But as these more primitive tribes did not secure their resource, it fell to trespassers. These alleged trespassers claim the field was unowned; thus, their acquisition is just. Conflict ensues over scarce resources. And since we’re thousands of years away from the English common law…
No Private Property = Equality?
A "third way" of conflict resolution, where nobody owns anything, is not a realistic solution. Whatever exists “in the commons” will be appropriated. A first come, first served rule is the only fair one.
We, humans, will always have different tribes with different values. Resources will always be scarce and randomly distributed. We must learn to live next to each other and trade from a distance. Not wipe each other off the face of the earth (or force incompatible cultures together in the name of "diversity.”)
We must also take possession of resources for survival. Unlike birds, beavers or spiders, we learned to trade with one another. We learned to use our extended phenotypes to better our lives. But could everything be owned in common? It's an interesting idea but does not correspond to how the world works.
What about striving for equality of outcomes? Is it dangerous? It's one thing if humanity discovers how to share everything in common through an enlightened state of mind. Or if we find ways to cap wealth while ensuring no child goes to bed hungry. But to coerce it through the State or some other involuntary third party is asking for one group to rule over another.
Equality under law is essential. It’s what allows for equality of opportunity in markets and in other aspects of civic life. In the Western tradition, nobody is above the law. Nobody is born with special privileges accrued to them through unnatural means. But what is natural? This is the fundamental difference between the Tory anarchist and other schools of anarchism. Leftists seek to create equality. The Tory expects inequality and accepts it for what it is.
It is absurd to deny there are physical and mental differences between people. Even within yourself – parts of you are not equal to who you were. Different outcomes are natural and normal. Accepting this fact of life brings us closer to addressing the inequalities that matter. The time to fight inequality is when some people are profiting at the expense of others. That is, when an act of aggression violates person and property, only then does the resulting inequality require corrective action.
But this isn't the type of equality leftists and neo-liberals often champion. The State's existence creates inequality between the haves and have-nots—those who produce in the private sector and those who live off this surplus value via taxation. But the inequality envisioned by leftist philosophies is another thing altogether.
Sometimes, leftists will claim no fundamental differences between people. That everyone deserves equality. But equalizing everyone is incompatible with liberty and property. It implies a permanent ruling class with coercive power. Otherwise, how are we to equalize each other?
If the approach is purely voluntary and peaceful, then the Tory anarchist has no qualms with the left-wing anarchist. But if a "people's committee" or some other coercive authority demands equality of outcomes instead of equality of opportunity – then we have a problem.
With a top-down approach to enforcing equality, the power elite determines which differences are advantageous or disadvantageous. As we're seeing now with "woke" culture and hyper-political correctness, we may all be equal, but some groups are more equal than others.
Forced equality, or egalitarianism, always requires a ruling elite to implement. They create a "we know better" society, which, in true Orwellian fashion, claims to be for diversity, inclusion, and equity. Yet it's clear neo-liberalism (and many strains of leftism) are intellectual covers for totalitarian social control.
Even if left-wing professors have nothing but goodness in their hearts, the consequences of their ideologies empower the ruling class. And the ruling elite are always in it for themselves. In a coercive system like ours, the worst rise to the top. Useful idiots stay at the bottom or rise high enough to become fodder for the occasional outburst of public rage.
But I hear the pension is great.
Did Canada Steal its Land?
Canadians need to understand the importance of private property rights. This isn't to say property is everything, but it is essential. And it means more than land. Your body is yours. The resources you acquire from nature (or purchase on the market) are yours. Since private property rights act as a bulwark against the centralizing State, there's been a concerted effort over generations to undermine property's importance and to exalt democratic means of control as more enlightened and superior.
Indoctrination is the true purpose of public schooling. Just as Residential Schools tried to eradicate Indigenous cultures or how the Prussian State separated the child from the family and made war – as opposed to farming, industry, or commerce – a heroic and romantic pursuit. We can also look at schools during the Middle Ages and find the Church indoctrinating the youth into their spell. School is and has always been a means to shape young, impressible minds to fit the mould of the system. In modern times, it's demonizing liberty and property in favour of a democratic system with its entrenched special interests.
University professors placing private property and free markets under moral suspicion ought to be laughed out of the lecture hall. They are not serious thinkers. You could have made some interesting arguments in the 19th century, even as late as the 1920s. But a near quarter into the 21st century, it's clear what works and what doesn't. Liberty and property are paramount.
The problem stems from distinguishing between prior state actions and legislation that have altered property holdings with the rightful owners. This is different from the theoretical basis for private property. In other words, we should be concerned with how we relate the justification for private property to the real world. Namely, since European settlers arrived in a land already occupied by people, are current property holdings illegitimate?
All State property is illegitimate. But it doesn't follow that all current private property in Canada, held by millions of individuals, is the rightful property of Indigenous groups, themselves made up of just over a million individuals. As with all things in life, a little nuance is required. For example, it's obvious the Wet'suwet'en First Nation, located in the northwestern central interior of British Columbia, have property rights over their land.
People have property rights in areas where they've "mixed their labour" and built structures like homes. The State and its corporate welfare whores trying to ram a pipeline through their land without consent are the aggressors.
Yet, at the same time, it is nonsensical for private owners in other parts of the country to declare that they live on the unceded lands of First Nations people. Which First Nations? Not their clan name but the actual individuals and their families. Who are these people? When did you take their land? If you're acknowledging it, why aren't you giving it back?
We are not our ancestors. If we were to take the neo-liberal and leftist arguments seriously, then we'd have to accuse the Iroquois of stealing land from the Huron (and doing much worse). And what of the Clovis culture that predates Canada's First Nations? And then we ought to hit Europeans with a double whammy. Not only did "my people" take First Nations land, "we" committed genocide against the Neanderthal race.
Of course, this line of reasoning is ridiculous. Stolen land in Canada includes current State expropriations and the no-homesteading rule on so-called Crown land. Regarding the legitimacy of today's private property holdings, perhaps it's best to quote economist and classical liberal Ludwig von Mises:
However, the fact that legal formalism can trace back every title either to arbitrary appropriation or to violent expropriation has no significance whatever for the conditions of a market society. Ownership in the market economy is no longer linked up with the remote origin of private property. Those events in a far-distant past, hidden in the darkness of primitive mankind's history, are no longer of any concern for our day. For in an unhampered market society the consumers daily decide anew who should own and how much he should own. The consumers allot control of the means of production to those who know how to use them best for the satisfaction of the most urgent wants of the consumers. Only in a legal and formalistic sense can the owners be considered the successors of appropriators and expropriators. In fact, they are mandataries of the consumers, bound by the operation of the market to serve the consumers best. Under capitalism, private property is the consummation of the self-determination of the consumers. (pp. 679–80)
Canadian private property is just unless proven otherwise.
Proof of Victimization
The proponents of the exploiters vs. the exploited dogma often don't require proof of victimization. There is no due process, no appeal to history. One only needs to look at some of the Canadian responses to the current crisis in the Middle East.
Support for the one-state Palestinian solution and the eradication of Israel as a "colonizer" clearly demonstrates a lack of critical thinking. And it isn't just the idiot opinion of the youth (I believed some pretty dumb things when I was younger). University professors are promoting this dogma.
Without a burden of proof of victimization, Canada's ruling elite can claim victimhood for any group. By rejecting private property rights in favour of "individual liberation" or "civil rights," we've created a new ethos that threatens to undermine what makes Canada worth living in. Take, for example, the belief in systemic racism.
It is now believed that a colour-blind society is not only impossible but undesirable. That, even if we were able to treat each other as individuals, institutional distortions would persist, requiring an ongoing rectification for a just society. (Brought to you by a self-appointed anti-racist elite).
Although the term "Cultural Marxism" is technically inaccurate, one can see how and why it stuck. Marxism considers history as a progressive force, where the contradictions of capitalism will manifest, and the proletarian will lead a violent revolution to socialism.
Likewise, modern secularism creates race-based identities or “classes” and strives for a historic overthrow of the “white-male privileged” society. This revolution calls for the empowerment of the alleged victims, but, like with Marxism, the result is the empowerment of the ruling class.
The economic achievements of "white" males do not come at the expense of others. Markets are not a zero-sum game until the State gets involved. Shaming people about the sins of their ancestors has no bearing on the real exploitative relationships that exist today.
The word "privilege" comes from prīvus ("private") and lēx ("law"). Tory anarchism celebrates privilege. We don't shame it. Privilege, or private law, is the entire Tory anarchist philosophy summed up. The goal is to spread privilege to everyone, not try to limit those who already have it.
A discrimination-free society is impossible. It empowers the State and its ruling elite at the expense of everyone else, regardless of wealth or demographics. In the long run, everyone loses.
The only two classes in society are taxpayers and tax consumers. A minority of tax consumers have invented ideologies to justify their rule. Doctrines that undermine liberty and property. They suggest that society's conflicts don’t originate from scarcity but instead originate from your skin colour or what your ancestors might have done.
The consequences of this bad philosophy are now playing out in the real world. And the result is increased social conflict, not less.