Political Problems Have Only One Real Solution
By Robert Higgs • Monday February 18, 2013 5:05 PM PDT • 7 Comments
Eldridge Cleaver famously declared, “You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.” Although I did not agree with this sentiment in its original context, it has more definite applicability in regard to what one might think of as “solving political problems.”
Notice, first, that politics consists in the struggle to control the power that allows one party (whether an individual or a group) to impose its preferences on other parties who object to this imposition. Some political struggles involve attempts to make new impositions; others involve attempts to throw off existing, unwanted impositions. Because in our time the state is usually the organization that possesses the greatest coercive power, politics often boils down to a contest over who will control the state and how state authorities will wield their power. Politics, in short, ultimately has to do with the question: who will be master?
When we recognize that political problems always involve this question, we see immediately that they can have no solution short of complete capitulation by the political losers. Unless they concede that others will be their masters, they will continue to struggle, either overtly or covertly. Thus, political problems remain perpetually unresolved in any more than a tactical, short-term way. Losers may appear to have given up, but usually if not always they will continue to harbor a desire to throw off their master or some aspect of the master’s regime and continue to work in some way toward the attainment of that objective.
Of course, wherever more than one way of dealing with an issue exists, there is no necessity of resort to politics. If everyone agrees to let each party act as it wishes without coercive interference, a genuine political solution does exist: abandon politics. Of course, many social thinkers deny the feasibility of this solution as a general matter, however much they may concede that many issues can be handled satisfactorily by following the rule, laissez faire, laissez passer. If no genuine “public goods” exist (as some theorists maintain), however, then complete individual liberty solves every political problem ipso facto. Notice, though, that this “political solution” works only because it rules out genuinely political action entirely.
If one is willing to live and let live, to accept that each party may go its own way and deal with its perceived problems as it prefers, provided only that it allows equal latitude to every other party, then all political problems as such evaporate. The difficulty arises from some parties’ insistence on having their own way, however objectionable that way may be to other parties. To return to Cleaver’s dictum, adding appropriate amendments: You’re either part of the solution (by abandoning participation in politics) or you’re part of the problem (of endless political conflict).
Tags: Liberty, Peace, Personal Liberty, Philosophy, Politics, Power, The State 
That Hoppe article is priceless, thanks!
A Country Farmer | Feb 18, 2013 | Reply
The failing of Cleaver’s comment is that it divides people into opposing side, which is a real problem.
Sam Grove | Feb 19, 2013 | Reply
There are at least four groups of wannabe masters who refuse to live and let live. They are
(1) theocrats,
(2) militarists,
(3) redistributionists, and
(4) crony capitalists, or the greedy.
Granted, crony capitalist is not a synonym for ‘greedy person’, but it is certainly true that every crony capitalist has an inordinate desire for wealth and that the greed motivates eagerness to establish and to maintain a patron in the form of government. The USA has been from its conception in British imperialism an example of what happens when crony capitalists get carried away by their greed. So maybe we should separate crony capitalists from the merely greedy.
At any rate, you might have noticed how prevalent is the character flaw of greed. Militarists, for example, want something to which they think theirselves entitled, but they want government to coerce other people into providing it. Crony capitalists are rent seekers. The redistibutionists may be the greediest of all (and the most homicidal, too), and it seems that their number are well represented in groups 2 and 3, too, at least in N. America.
This brings me to group 1, the superstitious and utterly deranged. Knowing what we do about theocrats, why should we suppose that any of the other three problems can be solved without also solving the theocrat problem? Why should we suppose that the most popular theocratic religions, Islam and Christianity, could ever be permanently pacified? And what about little Judaism, that cult of animal sacrifice for arrogant fanatics who think that a patch of land is the grant of a god?
Turning a blind eye to theocrats won’t bring you to the world of live and let live, and your connivance certainly won’t endear you to people with the good sense to reject all theism, esp. theocracy. Nevertheless, Independent Institute gives theocrats a free pass, albeit in a wishy-washy way. It refuses to attack Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, directly, expressly, and overwhelmingly. So Independent Institute is doomed to fail.
Paul T | Feb 25, 2013 | Reply
Paul, Your anti-theist claims are simply incorrect. The ideas of liberty, reason, science, rule of law and progress and the historic movements for liberty came from the Judeo-Christian natural tradition, not the determinist and moral and epistemological subjectivism inherent in atheism/naturalism. Indeed, the rise of the nation state and global war in the modern world has come from the anti-theist crusaders of post-Enlightenment secularists who have sought to use statism and invasive war to eliminate religion from society by imposing secular theocracies.
Here is just a small sampling of references that we would recommend:
Here also are a couple quotes from C.S. Lewis on theocracy:
David J. Theroux | Feb 25, 2013 | Reply
In the last paragraph R. H. should have clearly expressed the freedom of each group of volunteers to go its own way, at the own expense and risk, via individual and groups secessionism and extraterritorial autonomy for the free and tolerant experiments of all kinds of groups of volunteers. That freedom is realised already in many other spheres, e.g. in the natural sciences and technology and in most countries for religions. It would be as successful in the political, economic and social spheres, which are, everywhere, all too much monopolised by territorial governments. We need free markets, free enterprise, free trade, freedom of experimentation, freedom of contract and freedom of association in these spheres as well, even for the diverse factions of statists, to the extent that they desire to do their own things only for and to themselves. Then they could be tolerated by others and could even become allies in the struggle for this kind of liberty for all.
John Zube | Feb 26, 2013 | Reply