Chapter 14 LIBERTARIAN GUERILLA WARFARE * Rebellion against Government * The Peaceful Means Argument * Injustice is Everyone's Fight * The Problem of the Innocents * Questions to Determine Philosophical Orientation * Prerequisites of a revolution * Thoughts on Terrorism and Guerrilla Warfare * Strategy * Tactics * Morale * Rebellion against Government When is it OK to rebel against a government? Is there some point where you throw your hands up and say "Enough!" and pick up a gun? If there is, has it been reached yet? Yes, there is such a point, and yes, it has been passed. For some Americans, it occurred in May of 1985 when the Philadelphia police deliberately (and legally) burned to death 11 people, including four children. For others it occurred in April of 1993 when over 75 people (including at least 25 children) perished in Waco, Texas. But these were merely specific personal breaking points for some people in one country. A more generally relevant answer to the questions would come from an examination of the underlying principles which justify violent revolution. Some allowances have to be made in judging the behavior of police - we cannot, after all, expect perfection, neither in a government police agency nor in a private defense agency. If a policeman accidently runs over your cat while he is chasing a bank robber, it would not really be reasonable to condemn his government to annihilation. Even cases of deliberate aggression would not necessarily justify rebellion. We cannot expect ALL police agents to be decent people at ALL times, but we CAN (and MUST) demand legal protection against the aggressions they sometimes DO commit, in the same way and for the same reasons that we expect legal protection against non-government criminals. As long as the government is structured so as to provide the citizens with legal protection against aggression by its own agents, it should not be condemned for the aberrant violent behavior that some individual agents may manifest. Even such things as the Rodney King beating would not justify revolution - if the perpetrators were brought to justice and punished for their crime. The line beyond which revolution is justified is crossed when the aggressive behavior that I have mentioned is institutionalized. By that I mean codified and legally accepted. To use the Rodney King incident as an example: the perpetrators excused their attack on the grounds that everything they did was strictly in accordance with codified police department procedures. This justification was legally accepted. (In a sane society, such an excuse would be grounds for including the police department training personnel in the trial - charging them with abetting an attack on a citizen.) Another very blatant example of institutionalized aggression can be seen in the forfeiture laws. Forfeiture is used to legally deprive innocent people of their property without a jury trial, and is one of the government aggressions that the Fourth and Fifth Amendments were intended to forbid. It is at this point - when legally institutionalized procedures provide immunity to government agents who initiate force against the lawful behavior of free citizens - that revolution is justified. * The Peaceful Means Argument It is argued that violence is not justified as long as there is ANY non- violent protest procedure available. But to assert that violence is not justified so long as there are peaceful means is to assert that violence is NEVER justified, for there are ALWAYS peaceful means. George Washington could have become a faithful subject of the king, been appointed governor of the colonies, and used his position of power to effect many beneficial changes - peacefully. A good citizen could become a member of the mafia, and by working his way up through the ranks attain a position wherein he could considerably reduce the evils perpetrated by this odious organization. When knocked down by a common thug, you could resort to the peaceful means of appealing to his "better side" and entreating him gently to cease engaging in such undesirable behavior. Of course while you are talking - peacefully - the thug is bashing in your brains. It is easy to see the fallaciousness of the "peaceful means" argument. But in fact, you are obliged to restrain yourself to peaceful means only when your adversary refrains from using violent means against you. When one is fighting for his freedom against an armed and violent enemy he does not resort merely to verbal entreaties; he most certainly does not collaborate with his enemy; and under no circumstances is it conceivable that he should actually join with his enemy. Along with the principled invalidity of the "peaceful means" argument, there is a practical objection to it also. There is a sense in which libertarians and statists simply cannot even communicate, much less compromise. In the realm of ethics, they speak mutually incommensurable languages. You cannot persuade a man that his behavior is evil when his entire life is founded on the conviction that his behavior is good. There are indeed things about which you cannot argue - you can only fight. You can argue on the basis of practicality, and you can argue on the basis of ethical principle, but ultimately, when you are up against someone who will not see reason, you can only fight. It is not pleasant to kill any creature, but to pretend that one can live without doing so is self-deception. There has to be meat in the dish, there have to be vegetables forbidden to flower; even the cycles of microbes must be sacrificed for us to continue our own cycles. It is neither shameful nor shocking that this should be so, it is simply a part of the great revolving wheel of natural economy. And just as we must preserve our physical species in these ways, so, too, we must preserve our moral species (those who love freedom) against others who wish to destroy it, or else fail in our obligation to pass on to our children the culture of freedom. If this notion of violent warfare shocks or offends you, it is because you have not been able to stand off and, knowing what you are, see what a difference in KIND must mean. You have not yet been able to recognize, and accept, that there is a profoundly important distinction between you and a policeman. He is not just an "ordinary man" who is merely "doing his job." He is a person who believes that is is not merely appropriate to use coercion but that it is necessary to do so. Your mind is confused by your cultural ties and your upbringing. You are still half-thinking of them as beings of the same kind as yourself. That is why they have you at a disadvantage, for they are not confused. They are alert and corporately aware of danger to their species. They can see quite well that if they are to survive they must be protected from the threat posed by your existence. In loyalty to their kind, they cannot tolerate your freedom; in loyalty to your kind, you must not tolerate their enslavement. If you still feel shocked, or doubtful, just consider some of the things that these people, who have taught you to think of them as your fellows, have done. The savage beating of Rodney King, and the deliberate burning to death of children, are legally-sanctioned expressions of government behavior. * Injustice is Everyone's Fight Some people claim that "injustice is everyone's fight." Others claim, as Thoreau observed, that "It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support." Does the choice of other men to act unjustly impose upon you a moral obligation to combat their injustice? Your moral stature is a function of YOUR choices, not the choices that other people make. Certainly a man has the real obligation not to participate in a vicious social system. But does he have in addition an obligation to actively combat such a system? Consider that if you accept, by default, the existence of an injustice, then you yourself (or your children) will be visited eventually by the consequences of that injustice. A man MUST be cognizant of his needs, whether those needs be biological (e.g., the need to avoid poison in his diet) or social (the need to avoid coercion in his society). Concern for the rights of others is a necessity if you care about your own future or the future of your children. But this concern for the rights of others must be punctilious. You must remember that the only "obligation" any man has toward you is to let you alone. He has no obligation to take any positive actions whatsoever regarding you or your situation. He has no obligation to combat your enemies. But he IS obliged not to join with your enemies in oppressing you. If he does so, he becomes your enemy. But as long as he does NOT do so, he may not be your ally - but he is at least a neutral. * The Problem of the Innocents Begin with the premise that rebellion must be selective - acting against tyrants and their supporters only - and must refrain from damaging innocent people. This leads to the question: who is really innocent, anyway? ATLAS SHRUGGED was published in 1957, and since 1972 the Libertarian Party has been vigorously bombarding the American people with knowledge of the principled distinction between freedom and slavery. Is there any excuse for any adults not to know what the difference is? No, there is no excuse for them. And you have no need to care about them. It is not in their behalf that you should fight the oppressive actions of their government, it is on your own behalf and also for the possible benefit of future generations. It is also on account of principle: One SHOULD fight against the evil of tyranny - it is the RIGHT thing to do for any person who desires to live in a world which is infused with Good rather than dominated by Evil. It is important to distinguish between victims and aggressors on the basis of their positive actions - on the basis of actual implementations of oppression. For example, a person who is subject to income tax is a victim, and thus you might say that a businessman is a victim because he is taxed. But observe that the same businessman is himself a willing participant in the implementation of taxation: he extracts taxes from his employees. An employee has a right to work for a living - that is a necessity for the preservation of his life - but he does NOT have a right to earn his living by depriving others of their property. Likewise, a businessman has a right to operate a business, but he does NOT have a right to deprive others (including his employees) of their property in the process of operating that business. Thus employers who collect withholding tax, merchants who collect sales tax, and any other professional people who aid in implementing the viciousness of government, must be considered victimizers even though they are also victims. The real question is not "Who is innocent?" but "Who is guilty?" The determining factors are the oppressive behavior (regardless of any assertions of intent - see CHAPTER 8) and the advocacy of such behavior. These attributes determine the guilty persons. Anyone who does NOT engage in oppressive behavior, or advocate such behavior, is innocent, even though he does nothing to combat tyranny but sit around and gripe. To complain about tyranny while submitting to it and taking no action to combat it is hypocritical: the complainer's actions and his words are contradictory - but what if the complaint is the only safe action he can take? Do not condemn a man for being a victim, nor for acting so as not to become a victim (except when his actions are themselves victimizing). In this context, there are three kinds of people: 1. Those who actively sanction, support and advocate statism. A subset of these are people who in practice do willingly participate in statism (such as sales-tax collectors and voters) even though they may protest some of the government's oppressions. 2. Those who say: "I don't care about tyranny. I am interested only in my immediate self-interest. In short, I should do those things that benefit me - even if the State should happen to benefit from them also." These are the people who invariably seek profits at the expense of their asserted convictions. The best examples of these people are the scientists who willingly sell their souls to the State in return for laboratories financed by loot. It is proper to do things that benefit yourself, even if you thereby become a victim of oppression. But it is NOT proper to willingly engage in oppressive behavior yourself. If the things you do actually constitute oppressive behavior then you are in the first category, regardless of your assertions. 3. Those who actively oppose the State and do all they reasonably can to avoid supporting it. The goal of a revolutionary should be to fight the first, ignore the second, and embrace the third. * Questions to Determine Philosophical Orientation How do you tell just what a person really is? You can't simply pose the straightforward question "Do you believe in liberty?" You will merely get a null-value answer: if he really does believe in liberty he will answer "Yes" but if he does not really believe in it he will also probably answer "Yes." It's like asking a man if he is honest - you get the same answer whether he is or not. You have to go at it in an indirect way, asking questions designed to circumvent his dishonesty (or his ignorance - many people would answer the questions without real knowledge of what is liberty or what is honesty). You must also allow for any self-delusion he has. What is important is not to ascertain the rationale that he uses to justify his behavior, but the actual motivation underlying the behavior. The questions should be constructed so as to pose a distinguishable separation between two phenomena. The important thing to look for when you ask them is NOT the clarity and precision with which the person identifies the distinction, but merely whether or not he MAKES the distinction. After all, you cannot expect an ordinary person to be a trained philosopher or logician, but you can and SHOULD expect him to be a decent human being, and thus to REALIZE that there is a distinction to be made, even though he may not be able to precisely specify that distinction. Here are some sample questions: Under what circumstances would it be proper for a group of men to do something that it would be improper for an individual member of that group to do alone? How do you distinguish between trade and theft? [according to Marxist doctrine, there is no distinction.] How do you distinguish between taxation and theft? What are you opposed to - the people running the government, the way they are running it, or government itself? Define freedom. Define slavery. What is the fundamental distinguishing characteristic of government? What are the proper functions of government? What is the alternative to government? What is the difference between Politics and Economics? What is the logical fallacy in the statement "cheating on a tax form"? Under what circumstances may the State justly place its welfare above that of an individual citizen? Would you be morally justified in killing an innocent person if that were the only way to prevent your own death? How do you distinguish between criminal and non-criminal behavior? Is there a distinction between moral principle (natural law) and legislative enactment (government law)? Illustrate your answer by reference to gambling and to the legal and illegal ownership of gold, whiskey and heroin. By what means do you propose to restrict behavior of which you disapprove? At whose expense will your proposed program be implemented? What part do you play in the political process of the community? What have you done to reduce your taxes? Do you judge both government behavior and non-government behavior by reference to the same ethical principles? Do you believe it is necessary for each individual to independently derive the ethical principles which he uses to govern his life? [The Nietzschean answer to this is "yes"] * Prerequisites of a revolution For a revolution or civil war to occur in a country, two conditions must be met: 1. The population of the country must be divisible into at least two mutually exclusive groups. These are the groups that would actually be shooting at each other during the conflict. For example, the Union army and the Confederate army. American Libertarians would, of course, see these two groups as "the government" and "the people" but I believe this view is false. We need only look at the Rodney King riots to see that "the people," when outraged by government behavior, did NOT attack the government but instead attacked their own neighbors and destroyed their own neighborhoods. 2. There must be possible a triggering situation that would precipitate the conflict. I believe that in America this is precluded by the general attitude toward tyranny. As I described it in Chapter 7, it rests on the phrase "too much." If you press a protester until you can get him to identify the foundation of his enmity, you will usually find that it is based on a statement containing some variation of the phrase "too much." He is not fundamentally opposed to slavery, just "too much" slavery. He is not fundamentally opposed to tyranny, just a level of tyranny that is "far beyond" what he judges acceptable. He is not fundamentally opposed to government interference in private lives, just "an excessive amount" of interference (or a type of interference that is not HIS proposed type of interference). It is very unlikely that, for this man, there will be ANY level of "too much" that would induce him to take up arms and rebel. In any case, such an ambiguous level would surely be different for each individual (just ask several and you will see). And thus NO level would suffice to precipitate a general rebellion. Because these two conditions are not (and I believe cannot be) met in America, I do not forsee a revolution occurring here. I suspect rather that our society will merely continue down the path of deterioration that it has been on, eventually collapsing into an all-enveloping chaos of uncontrolled urban rioting similar to that we have seen in several of our cities from time to time - most recently in Los Angeles after the Rodney King beating. * Thoughts on Terrorism and Guerrilla Warfare Terrorism consists of acts of violence designed to affect the victims not merely physically but psychologically also. It produces, in the minds of the victims, a long-term anxiety resulting from not knowing who is going to be attacked, where the attack will take place, when it will take place, or what form of violence will occur. If the concept of terrorism is to be a psychological-psychiatric concept rather than a merely legal-political concept, its study should include many politicians, military personnel, police, businessmen (particularly armaments manufacturers), scientists and technicians in addition to the skyjackers and urban guerrillas to whom the term is usually applied. Imbuing fear into the minds of your enemy is a legitimate aim of warfare, thus terrorism is a valid tool of combat. However, there are few, if any, revolutionary groups in the world today who apply it properly. They fail utterly to make a proper identification of their actual enemy. Consider those groups usually - and properly! - labeled as terrorists. They are active in many countries around the world: the ETA in Spain, the PLO in Israel, the IRA in England. None of these groups makes much, if any, distinction between the government they are fighting and the people who are subjects of that government. They strike not only at members of the government, but also indiscriminately at the general public. In the minds of such groups, war is morally equivalent to bombing a prison because one has a grievance against its sadistic warden. Indiscriminate violence is not only wrong in principle, it is also counterproductive in practice: many British people who might otherwise be sympathetic to the IRA's desire to see British troops pulled out of Northern Ireland are appalled at the spectacle of bombs killing their neighbors in the subway, and are thereby quite rightfully inclined to support the suppression of the IRA and its goals. A principled revolutionary group should strike only at ethically justifiable targets, and the general public is NOT such a target. As Murray Rothbard has observed (FOR A NEW LIBERTY pg269): "Revolutionary guerrilla war can be far more consistent with libertarian principles than any inter-State war. By the very nature of their activities, libertarian guerrillas defend the civilian population against the depredations of a State; hence, guerrillas, inhabiting as they do the same country as the civilians, cannot use weapons of mass destruction. Further: since guerrillas rely for victory on the support and aid of the civilian population, they must, as a basic part of their strategy, spare civilians from harm and pinpoint their activities solely against the State apparatus and its armed forces." Even actual terrorists recognize that, to some extent, they must side with the people against State tyranny - as in this account of how the IRA helps those opposing the occupation: After internment the Catholics went on rent strike, and there was talk of shutting off the water and the electricity if they didn't pay up. So what did Paddy do? He went round to the local betting shop, held up the cashier, raked in a few thousand quid, then went to the first house in the street and asked, "How much do you owe?" "Forty seven pounds and twelve pence." "Here's the money." And he went down the whole street with the cash and paid them out. The rent man came, knocked at the first door: "Mrs Murphy, you owe..." She paid it all, the book was signed, and so on down the row. The rent man got to the last house well pleased he'd got the money off all the street - and Paddy was standing there on the corner: "Hands up!" Took all the money off the rent man, gave it back to the bookie, and that was it. You have to admire that: brilliant. In order for a libertarian rebellion to succeed, it must be implemented very carefully - in principle and in practice. There must be careful adherence to the strategy of striking only against the oppressive behavior of the State, and not striking against innocent people who are themselves victims of that State. In so doing, the rebels will more and more bring the victims into sympathy with their goals rather than alienating them. A carefully controlled and directed attack on government could indeed be conducive to an ameliorative change in a tyrannous government. 1. By reducing the government's economic resources, it would reduce the government's ability to oppress its subjects. 2. It would reduce the oppressive motivation of individual government agents by giving them negative reinforcement for such behavior. The police might not care what publicity says about them, but they will care if there is forceful retaliation for what they do. Each will have to think before he continues his oppression, and ask himself what might happen to him in response. Armed agents of a tyrannous State respect the rights only of those whom they have reason to fear. It is, of course, impossible for a small number of freedom fighters to stand in force against the armed might of a government. But there is great potential for a few dedicated guerrilla fighters to accomplish a considerable amount of change in the behavior of a government. The weapons with which a government can be hit and hurt by an individual or small group of rebels are assassination and sabotage. If a few people hate the State fervently enough to fight effectively against it, the State won't be able to control the country economically because of the ruination of its expensive equipment. It can't just ignore the rebels or pretend they don't exist - the State will have to start putting men and money into a fight against them, and that will bring it closer to the day when the State will be politically and/or economically disabled, or at least reduced in its ability to impose tyranny. This fight would, indirectly, reduce the support for government in the general population, since government would have to increase the economic drain it imposes on the citizens it claims to be protecting - in order to compensate for the economic losses imposed by the rebels. So government will need more police and tax collectors to get the same amount of cooperation and resources out of the civilians - but that simply increases civilian resentment of the State. Consider the situation in America, for example. For two centuries the government has whittled away at freedom, gradually - with each additional law it passes - depriving the people bit by bit of their right to choose their own destiny. If the tyranny that exists today were to have been foisted in its totality upon our forefathers they would have risen in a rebellion even more forceful than that which they inflicted upon the tyrants of King George. The government could never have accomplished such a massive change in one fell swoop - it had to be brought about in a lengthy series of gradual encroachments: in small enough doses that the populace would be willing to accept each encroachment individually as being of itself insufficient to justify the immense rebellion required to bring down the entire government. But this process is a two-edged sword. In a like manner, the people could turn this sword against government and gradually reduce its tyrannical power over them. They could do this through a series of small encroachments on government power, none of them in and of itself sufficient to induce the government to undertake the expense of a major military mobilization, but all of them adding up over the years to the gradual reduction of government tyranny. But they can achieve this goal only if they make proper and effective use of the force they possess. To use it properly, they must make sure it is directed only against the appropriate target: government. And to use it effectively, they must make sure that it is applied in a way that will have the desired influence on government behavior. * Strategy Some of the primary precepts of warfare are: Force the enemy to abandon his intentions and submit to yours. Lessen the enemy's will to pursue his intentions. Disarm the enemy morally, economically, and militarily. The strategic aims of the rebels should be to make the State less capable of functioning and less determined to function. And to show others who hate the State that it is possible to strike effectively against it. Their long-term goals should be the sort of police protection law described below, coupled with the repeal of all victimless-crime laws. * Tactics A necessary part of this scheme is that two pieces of information be widely broadcast: To provide the negative reinforcement mentioned above, the rebels must tell the State exactly why they are attacking it and what it is they want the State to do. For example: "We demand the enactment and vigorous enforcement of a law making it a criminal offence for a policeman to interfere with the lawful behavior of a free citizen. Until our demand is met we shall continue to defend our freedom as forcefully as the government violates it. So long as we must live under the threat of government oppression, the government will live under the threat of our retaliation. We wish only peace and respect. If you will not see fit to grant us these things, then we will fight for them on the field of arms, a field of your choosing. You chose it when you sent your armed police into our lives." The rebels must also make sure the public understands their intentions. The public must know what the rebels are doing and why they are doing it. If the rebels attack the police and the public knows that their goal is to make everyone free from police brutality, or if they attack the IRS and the public knows that their goal is to diminish everyone's tax burden, then the public is much more likely to support (even if only tacitly) their ends. If the rebels don't get THEIR message to the public, then public opinion will be based only on the State's message. * Morale It may be asked, "Isn't it stupid and senseless to fight any war when there is no hope of winning it?" Mencken: "It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it only takes a few determined men and a sound cause." You, as an individual, and acting by yourself alone, CAN make a difference! If you can destroy just one police car, or in some way make just one cop reluctant to hassle people, then you have in fact reduced the extent of tyranny. If you make such a change, even a little one, then you've won something. You must be continually aware that there can never be an absolute, total victory. You have no hope of achieving any type of military victory over government forces, but if you act with prudence and restraint, the final political victory, the one that matters, will be yours. While it is true that the great power of government has absolute dominion over any small group of free people, it is also true that a man has absolute dominion over a hornets' nest. Your war will be a righteous war, a war fought to defend your rights and your honor against the colossus of the State. You have a new world of freedom to gain; your enemy has only a lost cause to lose. "But," it is claimed, "some policemen are good men who are only doing their jobs." An Allied soldier fighting the Germans did not question the particular character of each individual German he encountered, he merely looked at a man with a uniform and a gun, and he knew that man by those signs as his enemy, and he acted accordingly. Likewise, the rebel must not question the particular character of each individual policeman he encounters. It is by the uniform and the gun, and the ethical principles that those signs represent, that you recognize him as your enemy. By choosing to wear the uniform and bear arms against you he declares himself as being violently opposed to your existence. G. B. Shaw: "To kill a man in uniform who is your enemy is not an act of murder, but an act of legitimate warfare."