QuestionsMust we always obey the law?'To be governed is…': government replaced by free contract
Must we always obey the law?No master

'To be governed is…': government replaced by free contract

Proudhon's anarchy

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon 1809 · 1865A printer who became a writer, he launched the phrase "property is theft" in 1840 and looked for a society of equals without a state.
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What it claims

No government has legitimate authority over us, and society can do without one by organising itself through free contract.

Why

To be governed is to be commanded and exploited by people without title: free people can bind themselves by contract, with no master.

The same idea through history
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon1851General Idea of the Revolution: the version presented here. Proudhon wrote it in prison, a few months before Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte's coup. It extends his critique of property (see the argument on property).
Mikhaïl Bakounine1871Bakunin takes up Proudhon's anarchism, but with another idea of authority: that of freely accepted competences (see the bootmaker argument).
In short

"'To be governed is…': government replaced by free contract" is an argument by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, Epilogue (1851), 1851) on the question "Must we always obey the law?" (answer: no master). Its claim: No government has legitimate authority over us, and society can do without one by organising itself through free contract. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4, P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, Epilogue (1851)
Valid with an implicit premise

In 1851 Proudhon, in prison for his articles, writes a long list of what 'being governed' means: being watched, taxed, recorded, repressed, by people who have neither title, nor knowledge, nor virtue. It is not only an outcry. He proposes another system: instead of obeying a government, each person signs a free and reciprocal contract with his fellows, which he may refuse, and which binds those who sign it. Order would come from commitments and mutual responsibility, not from a master. Proudhon was the first to call himself an anarchist, but not against order: against the government of men by men. The P1 to P5 → C form is our reconstruction.

P1To be governed is to be watched, inspected, directed, regulated, censored and commanded by beings who have neither the title, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue to do so.
P2It is also, under pretext of public utility and the general interest, to be taxed, exploited, held to ransom, and, at the slightest resistance, at the first word of complaint, repressed.
P3Another society is possible: men who recognise that justice is better than iniquity agree among themselves to keep faith and right with one another. Each is free to join this pact or to refuse it. In case of breach, the signatories are responsible to one another.
P4 · implicit premiseAn authority that commands without title, knowledge or virtue, and that exploits and represses, is not legitimate.
P5 · implicit premiseIf a free and reciprocal pact can ensure order and security, then there is no need for a government.
Therefore no government has legitimate authority over us, and society can do without one by organising itself through free contract.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4 and P5, the computer finds a case where the government commands without title and exploits, yet is not illegitimate, or where a free pact ensures order and yet one cannot do without government. Proudhon has to assert that both bridges exist.
The argument is valid. A government commands without title (P1) and exploits (P2). By P4 it is therefore not legitimate. And since a free contract can ensure order (P3), then, by P5, one can do without government. Its strength is that it proposes a solution, not only a criticism. Its weak points are P3 and P5: can a free pact hold without a power that enforces it?
Analogy. A sports club. No one is forced to join. Its rules are written down, members commit to them and answer for their breaches. There is no king of the club, but a contract. Proudhon thinks a whole society can work this way.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Thomas Hobbes 1651 · attacks premise 3

An objection drawn from Hobbes, who wrote before Proudhon. Hobbes holds that without a common power to keep men in awe there is no industry, no culture of the earth, no arts, no letters, no society, and that the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. A free pact with no sword, no power to enforce it, falls back into this state.

a defender replies
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1651, after the author's death (1865).
E
Elinor Ostrom defender of the argument · 1990
Ostrom studies communities that manage common resources (pastures, forests, fisheries, irrigation systems) for centuries with neither state nor private property, through rules they give themselves, mutual monitoring and graduated sanctions. These cases show that durable self-organisation exists, without excluding other cases of failure.
The debate goes on (our summary) Ostrom studies small communities with specific resources, not whole societies, and she herself does not conclude that the state can be dispensed with. She argues that neither the state nor the market is the only solution. Hobbes could answer that these rules persist in the shadow of an external power. The argument is therefore not settled for large societies (our summary).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Hobbes: without a common power, it is war of all. Ostrom: real communities govern themselves without a state over long periods. The basic disagreement remains: does what works for small groups work for a whole society?
Max Weber 1919 · attacks premise 5

Weber defines the state as the human community that successfully claims, within a territory, the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force. An objection drawn from this definition (Weber does not discuss Proudhon): a free pact that provides sanctions must say who carries out the sanction and who judges it deserved. That power to sanction could be a state under another name (our summary).

Proudhon replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1919, after the author's death (1865).
Proudhon 1851 · What Proudhon already provides in the Epilogue
Proudhon provides sanctions in his pact: in case of breach, the signatories are answerable to one another for the damage, scandal and insecurity caused, and this responsibility may go, according to the gravity of the perjury or repetition, up to excommunication and death.
The debate goes on (our summary) Weber may see in this a confirmation of his thesis: a collective sanction, up to death, is a monopoly of force exercised by society against recalcitrants. A defender of Proudhon would answer that this is not a monopoly delegated to a government but a shared responsibility, checked by each (our summary). The difference between 'state' and 'pact with sanctions' therefore remains to be specified.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Weber: every society has a monopoly of legitimate force. Proudhon: the pact's signatories answer for one another. The basic disagreement remains: what distinguishes a state from a community that sanctions its own members?
Robert Nozick 1974 · attacks premise 4

Nozick starts from an anarchy of natural rights and argues that a dominant protection agency can arise through an 'invisible hand' process, without violating anyone's rights (provided it compensates those it stops from enforcing justice themselves). This agency becomes a minimal state, which is therefore not illegitimate. Proudhon's argument, which starts from the abuses of the real state, therefore does not touch the minimal state (our summary of the book's first part).

a defender replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1974, after the author's death (1865).
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Michael Huemer defender of the argument · 2013
Huemer argues that no state has political authority, that is, the right to coerce and the right to be obeyed: neither contract, nor fairness, nor utility justifies it. What the state does would be condemned if an individual did it. In the second part of the book he answers Nozick's idea that one agency would end up dominant: competing protection agencies would have an interest in settling their conflicts without violence, rather than going to war or forming a monopoly.
The debate goes on (our summary) Huemer also defends a society without a state, but in another form than Proudhon: competing private agencies, not a pact of reciprocity. His critics ask what would stop these agencies from fighting or merging. Nozick and Proudhon do not speak of the same state either: one of the minimal, the other of the real, with its laws and taxes (our summary).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Nozick: a minimal state can arise without wronging anyone. Huemer: the state does not have the authority it claims. The basic disagreement remains: does a power arising from voluntary transactions have a right to be obeyed?