Three Anarchical Fallacies: An Essay on Political Authority (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Law) [Hardcover]

William A. Edmundson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521624541 | ISBN-13: 978-0521624541 | Publication Date: September 28, 1998

How is a legitimate state possible? Obedience, coercion, and intrusion are three ideas that seem inseparable from all government and seem to render state authority presumptively illegitimate. This book exposes three fallacies inspired by these ideas and in doing so challenges assumptions shared by liberals, libertarians, cultural conservatives, moderates, and Marxists. In three clear and tightly-argued essays William Edmundson dispels these fallacies and shows that living in a just state remains a worthy ideal. This is an important book for all philosophers, political scientists, and legal theorists as well as readers interested in the views of Rawls, Dworkin, and Nozick, many of whose central ideas are subjected to rigorous critique.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...the review cannot convey the impressive combination of clarity, care, precision, focus, detail and conciseness with which Edmundson develops his arguments. Three Anarchical Fallacies is a very good work of philosophical analysis in my opinion." Ethics

"A marvelous book." Choice

Book Description

How is a legitimate state possible? Obedience, coercion, and intrusion are three ideas that seem inseparable from all government and seem to render state authority presumptively illegitimate. This book exposes three fallacies inspired by these ideas and in doing so challenges assumptions shared by many.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 206 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (September 28, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521624541
• ISBN-13: 978-0521624541
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 9.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,332,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fallacies indeed!, March 15, 2006

By 

David H Miller "rothbardianphysicist" (Sacramento, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Three Anarchical Fallacies: An Essay on Political Authority (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Law) (Hardcover)

That there is something seriously, well, unhinged in Bill Edmundson's perspective became clear to me when I read the following declaration (pp. 52-53: "Although the duty not to murder is far weightier than the duty not to jaywalk, the respective duties of the murderer and the jaywalker to submit to lawful arrest are of equal weight."

Could any sane person believe this? Would any normal person feel any serious remorse over cleverly giving the slip to an officious cop who was trying to arrest her for jaywalking?

Note that Edmundson does not simply argue that a jaywalker should meekly submit to arrest but that the obligation to do so is just as great as that incumbent upon a murderer.

That's crazy.

How could an apparently sane adult reach such a conclusion?

In his opening chapter, Edmundson informs us in great detail that all the best intellectual and academic authorities, including, he informs us, "eminent professors at places like Oxford, Virginia, Michigan, Columbia, and Toronto," have concluded that there exists no general duty to obey the law. He indicates that he agrees with this consensus and goes on at length to explain his reasons for so agreeing.

Prima facie, this would seem to strip government of any real moral legitimacy.

Edmundson cannot live with that conclusion. He therefore suggests that, although there is no general obligation to obey the laws of one's country, there is, nonetheless, an obligation to obey the concrete bureaucratic edict of any low-level governmental functionary (Edmundson chooses the phrase "administrative prerogative").

Edmundson can reach this bizarre conclusion only because his long-winded discussion of the reasons why the laws of one's country may not be morally binding ignores the most important reason of all: those laws were created simply by ordinary human beings who have somehow managed to arrogate to themselves the right to enact laws to which all citizens are expected to submit.

Indeed, those who make the laws are often morally inferior to, and possessing of less natural authority than, the ordinary man on the street: as Mark Twain once suggested in the case of the United States of America, "there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."

However, whatever the shortcomings of individual legislators, at least general laws can be publicly debated and inspected, are supposed to apply to everyone equally, etc. None of this is true of the specific, arbitrary decision of some low-level bureaucrat.

If, as Edmundson himself argues in great detail, the general law does not merit the respect and obedience of individual citizens, then surely the citizens are not morally obligated to obey the arbitrary ukases of some weaselly little governmental functionary.

In part two of the book, Edmundson argues that anarchists commit a fallacy in claiming that "the law is coercive."

His arguments here are equally bizarre.

Webster's New World Dictionary defines "coerce" as:

"1. to restrain or constrain by force, esp. by legal authority; curb. 2. to force or compel to do something. 3. to bring about by using force; enforce - SYN. see FORCE"

I have checked a number of other dictionaries which have similar definitions: clearly the idea of "force" is central to the concept of coercing.

Edmundson will have none of this. You see, since governments quite obviously do use force on the most massive of scales (guns, bombs, etc.), they quite obviously are "coercive" in the ordinary dictionary sense of the word. But "coercive" has a bit of a bad odor about it, and Edmundson is determined to remove any hint of an unpleasant stench from the concept of government.

So, Edmundson simply redefines the word "coercion" so as to remove any reference to the central point about force. Voila! Government is no longer coercive.

Of course, this actually changes nothing. The reason governmental authority has always been morally questionable is that governments routinely use massive violence in ways (war, taxation, etc.) which would be obviously immoral if pursued by private citizens. Changing the definition of the word "coercion" cannot change the nature of the actual physical activities in which governments engage.

In part three of his book, Edmundson does finally stumble upon a real fallacy, one due to John Stuart Mill: "Mill divides personal faults into two categories. Members of the first concern the actor's 'own good' but do not affect the interests of others..."

This is indeed a fallacy: even "private vices," such as smoking pot or holding bizarre religious opinions may, by the bad example they set, have a negative effect on the interests of other people, on society at large.

But this is not an "anarchical" fallacy: Mill, after all, was hardly an anarchist. (Indeed, Mill expressed serious sympathy for socialism, although he knew too much economics to be a socialist without reservations.)

This fallacy is instead a debating trick used by _supporters_ of government, such as contemporary liberals, socialists, etc., who try to reassure those fearful of government power that there is an "inner sphere" of "private morality" with which the government will never interfere. In practice, given the insatiable appetite of the state for power, this inner sphere tends to shrink to the vanishing point (consider the current push for "political correctness" in the US).

Anarchists emphatically reject this fallacy: the central argument of anarchy is that government cannot be constrained to any limited sphere of action and therefore must be abolished.

The liberal concept of "limited" government is an oxymoron.

In short, while Edmundson certainly delivers (at least) three fallacies in this book, the fallacies are not due to anarchists: the fallacies all belong to Edmundson himself or to his fellow liberals and socialists.

Although I myself am sympathetic to anarchism, I could easily pen a much harsher critique of anarchism than Edmundson has done. No intelligent critic of anarchism will find this book to be of any use whatsoever.

If this is the best that opponents of anarchism can do, then the intellectual triumph of anarchism is truly assured.

2 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "A Marvelous Book.", August 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Three Anarchical Fallacies: An Essay on Political Authority (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Law) (Hardcover)

"No bare synopsis of the argument can do justice to Edmundson's profundity, the care and depth of his reasoning, and the helpfulness of his engagement with the thought of contemporary scholars and philosophers long deceased. A marvelous book." Patrick Coby, Smith College, in Choice.