Why I Don't Use The Term "Statist"

I've settled on the term "totalitarian" as the optimal pejorative to describe those usually labeled "statist" by anarchists.

The benefits of this term are many:

1. America has successfully battled and discredited totalitarians on a grand scale, and there are numerous examples of such systems and their similarities and differences to the current degraded US system.

2. Virtually everyone agrees that both "totalitarians" themselves, and "totalitarian systems of law" are illegitimate. It's a pejorative that has been defined by Historians observing concrete phenomena. (Most importantly, totalitarianism is defined by the lack of due process, lack of PROPER trial by jury and arbitrary power of bureaucratic offices.)

3. From the average member of the Libertarian Party(Gary Johnson supporters), to Ron Paul supporters who are currently in the Republican Party, to stupid supporters of mainstream politicians like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Al Franken, totalitarianism is considered illegitimate, as are "totalitarian systems of law." Moreover, rational anarchists also consider totalitarianism to be worse than any other system, by some degree (which allows for a useful discussion of scalar values and a discussion of viability of outreach techniques, rather than binary "all or nothing" morality). Stupid communists who also believe communism can be expressed in a non-totalitarian manner often also understand the criticism "totalitarian" as a negative set of effects that is being put forth to critique their world-view.

4. Totalitarian states have differed from one another in their specific implementation, but not as much in their sociopathic, theft-based goal structures. In fact, the average IRS agent obviously intends to steal everything his victim has, even if it kills him or ruins his life, with no caring as to the negativity of the outcome, much the way Stalin's soldiers stole everything the Ukrainians had, resulting in their starvation and the ruin of their lives.

5. Many people(especially immigrants who fled totalitarian regimes) love the current USA society+government, because it is drastically less totalitarian than the governments they escaped or informed themselves about. Describing the variable as scalar totalitarian allows people to discuss what they like and dislike about the US government, comparing its features to other governments that EVERYONE ADMITS were worthy of destruction.

6. When discussing totalitarian measures, many such measures currently exist in the USA, right now. The US prison system is an immense gulag, scarcely better than the Russian gulag, and populated by people who were just as innocent. Sure, it might not be as bad, but it's still UNACCEPTABLE to decent people. Also, as fans of Marc know, the system of law here has been mostly destroyed, as it was in the Weimar Republic's descent into Nazism. Books like "The Ominous Parallels" discuss this descent, comparing it to the USA's own decline in concrete ways.

7. Totalitarianism describes all prohibitionist police states, and how they operate. It describes both Nazi Germany(often called "fascist"), and the 1950s USSR and China(often called "communist" or "socialist"). The use of the term fascism allows for both to be discussed as prohibitionist states that lack due process of law, property rights protections, and proper jury trials, as opposed to states that might possess some or all of these things, and function far better because of it. (The term "statism," by comparison, places those trying to reinstate jury randomness with the Adolph Hitlers, Charles Schumers, Jeff Sessionses, and Joseph Stalins of this world.)

8. Because totalitarianism is a term of shame in a free society, existing totalitarians have a reason to deny it applies to them, even if it's not a good reason (placing them on the defensive in debates). This allows one to reveal the ease with which totalitarian theft is adopted by totalitarian bureaucrats (many of whose fathers fought against the Nazis). This can be used to expose the destructiveness of totalitarianism, and society's tendency to move toward it, in the absence of strong limitations.

9. Using the term totalitarianism allows us to prioritize the actual problem, by degree, to its presence: the willing and enabled violation of individual rights by toxic sociopaths. There can be no DEA or FDA in any free country. They need to be disbanded in the USA. Also, they should be disbanded before the mail service or local garbage service, because they do nothing constructive and actively murder and/or imprison millions of innocents, and cause thousands more innocents to be murdered by the incentives they create. Should they be disbanded before the local police or state troopers? Maybe not: the local police (in their current illegitimate form as highway robbers) directly attack and rob more people than the FDA and DEA do, and the FDA and DEA rely on those police to enforce their edicts (which they all gladly do, in direct violation of their oaths to the constitution, or are fired, as Justin Hanners and Bradley Jardis were fired when they openly refused to obey unjust orders). In both cases though, those directly violating others' rights should be prioritized as the problem.

10. Totalitarianism describes both a political view and a condition that exists in material reality, unlike "authoritarianism" which is a philosophy many totalitarians hold. Also, someone can be "authoritarian" in managing their company and not be a totalitarian. (Totalitarian always pertains to a social and governmental system.) Many people have trouble separating the goal/philosophy with its implementation or manifestation in reality. The term "political authoritarian" might be similar to totalitarian, but it is even longer than totalitarian, and is an unwieldy compound term that is even more difficult to remember.

11. All the negative aspects of "statism" are contained in "totalitarianism" with none of the positive or arguably positive. Democracy, for example, may not be a good thing. ...But totalitarianism clearly is not a good thing, even to those who might at some point seek access to a ballot. Totalitarianism is associated with mass death, as it should be. Denial of due process brings us closer to such mass death, by implication of the term totalitarianism. (When totalitarianism was studied closely, this is what those studies revealed.)

12. An immense body of existing work has analyzed totalitarianism as the opposite of libertarianism. The link to regulation and due process to degradation of "checks and balances" is well known. In all cases, such links exist, as they do in the USA. This makes for a more powerful critique of existing(expanding!) totalitarian legal structures in the USA.

If you want voluntaryism, you need to get away from binary descriptors, except when choosing enemies worth destroying.

In any case, you won't find too many Americans who argue in defense of totalitarianism. In fact, if you can show them how the current system behaves in totalitarian manner, in concrete ways, they will often join you.

Contrast that with arguments against "statism"...such arguments strike most people as a wrong-headed nonsequitur. ...And they're not even familiar with the term. ...And when you define the term, they disagree with your definition. If you need to define a term that doesn't make intuitive sense, you are already on weak footing.

Agreeing on definitions prior to debate is absolutely essential to honest debate. Even if one is convinced of a new definition in the course of a debate, their pride will often cause them to reject that definition, and to attack the alien "nerdiness" or "cultishness" of a person who uses non-standard language and provides rare, little-used definitions.

Worse still: Many people use a definition of statist that essentially means totalitarian, and is compatible with the existence of a state. (Ie: John Ross describing big-government Democrats as "statist" in relation to small-government Democrats.)

Worse still, using "statist" to describe radical anti-government libertarians like myself amounts to eliminating common cause with the majority of people necessary to effect change of any kind. This aids the totalitarians' attempts to "divide and conquer" us. (One reason I suspect many "anarchists" are actually government employees who are paid to post divisive, stupid messages on social media, much like China's "50 Cent Army," who are notoriously paid 50 cents per day for posting pro-government messages.)

Worse still: anarchism has a history of failing in the USA, when minarchism relatively succeeded. A system of common law minarchism made the Fugitive Slave Law unenforceable in the Northern States, prior to the Civil War. Combined with the civil disobedience of the underground railroad, this powerful lesson from history is something that nearly 100% of civilians can understand and refer to, within their own minds. They can reason about it. The few who are aware of Garrisonians' anarchist demand for "No Union with Slave Holders" are often aware that Spooner's winning argument was "Slavery is Unconstitutional." (Though they often credit this argument to Frederick Douglass, or nobody at all.)

...After all, they loved the Constitution, and would passively support the rights of escaped slaves, if AND ONLY IF allowed to retain their identity as "patriotic constitutionalists." (This makes them hypocrites and unphilosophical, but who cares? The only goal was abolishing slavery.) If this position wasn't "allowed," as it was not, by the Garrisonians, support for abolition was divided, and thousands perished or were returned to slavery and death before Spooner's arguments ruled the day, politically.

If voluntaryism means anything, it means not allowing the modern equivalent of "thousands perished or were returned to slavery and death." This means fighting the prison system, and the punishing police state.

We need to normalize for benevolent outcomes, not cherished labels.