The Anarchy Game

     

One of the most valuable contributions in George’s book is his account of what he calls “the Anarchy Game.” Writers on political theory have often attempted to show that the positions of their opponents led to anarchy. If this could be done, they thought, they would have exposed a fatal flaw in these positions. “For centuries, the epithet ‘anarchy’ served the same function in political debates that ‘atheism’ served in religious debates. If one could show that the theory defended by one’s adversary logically ended in anarchy, then that theory stood condemned and nothing more needed to be said against it.” (97)

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George shows that this pattern of argument was especially important in the 17th and 18th centuries. Robert Filmer, defending royal absolutism, claimed that consent theories of government failed to accomplish their goal of providing a justification for government. No government could pass the tests that genuine consent requires. Locke, in response to Filmer in the First Treatise, turned the tables on his predecessor. The absolute sovereign defended by Filmer was in an anarchical relation with everyone else in his society, because he could not be held legally responsible for his acts.

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George maintains that Edmund Burke “played the Anarchy Game with great skill” (108) and he offers a penetrating discussion of Burke’s criticism of natural rights. He says of Burke’s early work A Vindication of Natural Society that “Burke of course intended this as satire; by embracing the anarchistic implications of consent theory, he was attempting to illustrate its absurdity.” (p.109) Here George differs with Murray Rothbard, who argued in a notable article that Burke’s work was seriously intended. (“A Note on Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society,” Journal of the History of Ideas, January 1958, 114-18.) Most Burke scholars differ with Rothbard, although Isaac Kramnick, in The Rage of Edmund Burke (New York: Basic Books, 1977), mentioned with sympathy Rothbard’s interpretation. I’d like to ask George for his comments on this piece. I’m sure he rejects its thesis, but it would be good to have his thoughts about the article.

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What was an absurd implication for Filmer was willingly embraced by Lysander Spooner and a few other radical individualists of the 19th century. If legitimate government required actual consent, but no actual government met this requirement, then existing governments were illegitimate. What was formerly taken to be an absurd implication of consent theory was willingly embraced. I’d like to call attention to a parallel in the history of science, elaborated with enormous learning in Amos Funkenstein’s great Science and the Theological Imagination (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1986), to my mind one of the masterpieces of 20th-century historiography. Funkenstein shows that premises, taken to be absurd, that were used in thought experiments were sometimes adopted by later writers in their theories of the actual world. Such premises proved of especial importance in the theory of motion. Evidently both in science and political theory, it sometimes happens that “the stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone.” (Psalm 118:22)