In part one of our two part series on secession and decentralization, we reviewed some of the benefits of decentralization and the inadequacies of alternative solutions for the problems the United States faces today from an inflationary monetary policy to mass immigration. More specifically, we saw why secession provides libertarians and genuine nationalists alike with the only viable means to achieve their respective ends. However, this raised an important question: how can a contemporary secessionist movement succeed and avoid the fate of the Confederacy? Indeed, any secessionist movement would be badly overmatched against the United States military. Furthermore, with supporters of secession spread out across the country, geography is another obstacle. Finally, there’s the question of how to properly desocialize publicly owned resources and avoid the mistakes made by East Germany and the former Soviet Union in the 90s. In this second and final installment, we’ll focus on the elucidation of a successful path to secession and a broader strategy of decentralization.
First, any secession movement must make its peaceful intentions clear. The federal government will launch an all-out propaganda campaign aided and abetted by the entire media establishment—as we saw in the case of Waco—but there are serious doubts public opinion would abide the use of such force again domestically if it were understood that the issue was simply about peaceful separation and self-determination. This is why it is imperative for secessionists to communicate well and make common sense appeals. While secession has led to war in our country’s history and Lincoln is unfortunately celebrated for his atrocities and tyranny, modern technology assures that similar atrocities would be recorded and broadcast for all of the world to see. This is no minor factor: seeing the Vietnam War on television helped turn public opinion against it. And public opinion will ultimately decide whether or not a secessionist movement is successful. With every ruling class greatly outnumbered by the people over whom they rule, in the final analysis, their power depends on tacit support or at least acceptance by the population. Consequently, a secessionist movement can critically wound a ruling class by delegitimizing them.
However, if a secessionist movement were similar in size and economic importance to the Confederacy, it would be much easier for the federal government to invoke The War Between the States to justify aggression, particularly with years of indoctrination courtesy of the Lincoln cult. Hoppe’s analysis points to several crucial lessons that can help a secessionist movement avoid a repeat of the Confederacy’s failure:
While it is important in this regard that the memory of the secessionist past of the U.S. be kept alive, it is even more important for the success of a liberal-libertarian revolution to avoid the mistakes of the second failed attempt at secession. Fortunately, the issue of slavery, which complicated and obscured the situation in 1861, has been resolved. However, another important lesson must be learned by comparing the failed second American experiment with secession to the successful first one. The first American secession was facilitated significantly by the fact that at the center of power in Britain, public opinion concerning the secessionists was hardly unified. In fact, many prominent British figures such as Edmund Burke and Adam Smith, for instance, openly sympathized with the secessionists. Apart from purely ideological reasons, which rarely affect more than a handful of philosophical minds, this lack of a unified opposition to the American secessionists in British public opinion can be attributed to two complementary factors. On the one hand, a multitude of regional and cultural-religious affiliations as well as of personal and family ties between Britain and the American colonists existed. On the other hand, the American events were considered far from home and the potential loss of the colonies as economically insignificant. In both regards, the situation in 1861 was distinctly different. To be sure, at the center of political power, which had shifted to the northern states of the U.S. by then, opposition to the secessionist Southern Confederacy was not unified, and the Confederate cause also had supporters in the North. However, fewer cultural bonds and kinship ties existed between the American North and South than had existed between Britain and the American colonists, and the secession of the Southern Confederacy involved about half the territory and a third of the entire population of the U.S. and thus struck Northerners as close to home and as a significant economic loss. Therefore, it was comparatively easier for the northern power elite to mold a unified front of “progressive” Yankee culture versus a culturally backward and “reactionary” Dixieland. [1]
Thus, Hoppe concludes that rather than multiple states or even a single state seceding, a successful strategy will require many much smaller movements simultaneously declaring secession across the country:
In light of these considerations, then, it appears strategically advisable not to attempt again what in 1861 failed so painfully: for contiguous states or even the entire South trying to break away from the tyranny of Washington, D.C. Rather, a modern liberal-libertarian strategy of secession should take its cues from the European Middle Ages when, from about the twelfth until well into the seventeenth century (with the emergence of the modern central state), Europe was characterized by the existence of hundreds of free and independent cities, interspersed into a predominantly feudal social structure. By choosing this model and striving to create a U.S. punctuated by a large and increasing number of territorially disconnected free cities—a multitude of Hong Kongs, Singapores, Monacos, and Liechtensteins strewn out over the entire continent—two otherwise unattainable but central objectives can be accomplished. First, besides recognizing the fact that the liberal-libertarian potential is distributed highly unevenly across the country, such a strategy of piecemeal withdrawal renders secession less threatening politically, socially, and economically. Second, by pursuing this strategy simultaneously at a great number of locations all over the country, it becomes exceedingly difficult for the central state to create a unified opposition in public opinion to the secessionists which would secure the level of popular support and voluntary cooperation necessary for a successful crackdown. [2]
Of course, some coordinated migration will likely be necessary before secessionist movements exist in sufficient numbers, but this strategy—along with a broader strategy of decentralization—stands a good chance of reversing the process of centralization and restoring private property rights. A restoration of the old American tradition of nullification should also form an integral part of a decentralization strategy. In fact, as a practical matter, nullification has a much greater chance of succeeding in the short term and paving the way for our ultimate end of secession. As Tom Woods explains, nullification
begins with the axiomatic point that a federal law that violates the constitution is no law at all. It is void and of no effect. Nullification simply pushes this uncontroversial point a step further: if a law is unconstitutional and therefore void and of no effect, it is up to the states, the parties to the federal compact, to declare it so and thus refuse to enforce it. It would be foolish and vain to wait for the federal government or a branch thereof to condemn its own law. Nullification provides a shielf between the people of a state and an unconstitutional law from the federal government. [3]
In order to maximize public sympathy, the significance of nullification throughout America history should be emphasized. [4] To assure skeptics of the legitimacy of this idea, it is crucial to stress that both Thomas Jefferson and James Maidson were outspoken proponents of nullification. As Woods further argues, latent sympathies among the American people could make this a propitious strategy:
To my surprise, a significant number of Americans are already sympathetic to nullification, without necessarily having heard of the idea before or weighed the arguments for and against. According to a February 2010 Rasmussen Reports poll, 59 percent of likely voters believe the states should have the right to opt out of federal government programs of which they disapprove. Just 25 percent disagree, while another 15 percent are not sure. This is not exactly the same thing as nullification, which involves the refusal to enforce unconstitutional laws, not simply laws the states do not like. But these numbers are significant all the same. [5]
In this sense, the tenth amendment of the constitution should be used to our advantage. This will not be accomplished by Supreme Court judges. Instead, the tenth amendment will rely on the people and the states. Like secession, nullification takes us closer to our libertarian end by undermining an overreaching federal government, thus bringing us closer to local self-government while affirming self determination. Also like secession, nullification rejects democracy and substitutes the rule of law for the rule of men.
With regard to the desocialization of public property, this cannot be done by the state auctioning it off to the highest bidder. As in the cases of the former Soviet Union and the reunited Germany, [6] this sort of privatization scheme will favor oligarchs and others connected to the state apparatus. More importantly, from the standpoint of libertarian ethics, this would be the equivalent of allowing a thief to sell stolen property and keep the proceeds. Instead, just as a thief should be required to return the property he stole to its rightful owner, property controlled by the state should be returned to the last known legitimate private owner. [7] In cases where this cannot be determined, Hoppe explains,
syndicalist ideas should be implemented; that is, the ownership of assets should immediately be transferred to those who use them — the farmland to the farmers, the factories to the workers, the streets to the street workers or the residents, the schools to the teachers, the bureaus to the bureaucrats, and so on. To break up the mostly over-sized socialist production conglomerates, the syndicalist principle should be applied to those production units in which a given individual’s work is actually performed, i.e., to individual office buildings, schools, streets or blocks of streets, factories and farms. Unlike syndicalism, yet of the utmost importance, the property shares thus acquired should be freely trade-able and a stock market established so as to allow a separation of the functions of owner-capitalists and non-owning employees, and the smooth and continuous transfer of assets from less into more value-productive hands. [8]
Additionally, net tax-payers would receive the title to undeveloped public land while net tax-consumers such as welfare recipients would be excluded. Moreover, because the salaries of public sector employees(e.g., public school teachers) are paid out of taxes, they must also be considered tax-consumers. Hoppe continues:
Publicly owned buildings and structures were all financed by taxes, and as far as undeveloped public land is concerned, it is the result of a public, i.e., tax-funded and enforced, policy prohibiting the private appropriation and development of nature and natural resources. Hence, it would appear that it is taxpayers, in accordance with their amount of taxes paid, who should be given title to public buildings and structures, while undeveloped public land simply should be opened up to private homesteading. . . . . As regards undeveloped public land available for private homesteading activities, every public land manager, ranger, etc., should be excluded for a similar reason from homesteading land currently occupied and formerly guarded by him against potential private developers. He may be permitted to homestead other public land that is presently occupied and formerly guarded against private development by other government agents. But to allow him to homestead land he currently occupies would give him an advantage over other potential homesteaders that would be manifestly unfair in light of the fact that it was he, paid in this by taxpayers, who had previously kept these taxpayers off and away from this land. [9]
As Rothbard cautioned, desocialization should proceed quickly and not be phased in:
It is, again, generally accepted that free markets must be arrived at quickly, and that phasing them in slowly and gradually will only delay the goal indefinitely. It is well known that the giant socialist bureaucracy will only seize upon such delay to obstruct the goal altogether. But there are further important reasons for speed. One, because the free market is an interconnected web or lattice-work; it is made of innumerable parts which intricately mesh together through a network of producers and entrepreneurs exchanging property titles, motivated by a search for profits and avoidance of losses, and calculating by means of a free price system. Holding back, freeing only a few areas at a time, will only impose continuous distortions that will cripple the workings of the market and discredit it in the eyes of an already fearful and suspicious public. But there is also another vital point: the fact that you cannot plan markets applies also to planning for phasing them in. Much as they might delude themselves otherwise, governments and their economic advisers are not in a position of wise Olympians above the economic arena, carefully planning to install the market step by measured step, deciding what to do first, what second, etc. Economists and bureaucrats are no better at planning phase-ins than they are at dictating any other aspect of the market. To achieve genuine freedom, the role of government and its advisers must be confined to setting their subjects free, as fast and as completely as it takes to unlock their shackles. After that, the proper role of government and its advisers is to get and keep out of the subjects’ way. [10]
In sum, privatization should proceed along the lines Rothbard proposed:
1. Enormous and drastic reductions in taxes, government employment, and government spending. 2. Complete privatization of government assets: where possible to return them to the original expropriated owners or their heirs; failing that, granting shares to productive workers and peasants who had worked on these assets. 3. Honoring complete and secure property rights for all owners of private property. Since full property rights imply the complete freedom to make exchanges and transfer property, there must be no government interference in such exchanges. 4. Depriving the government of the power to create new money, best done by a fundamental reform that at one and the same time liquidates the central bank and uses its gold to redeem its notes and deposits at a newly defined unit of gold weight of existing currencies. [11]
Finally, it behooves us to consider a few more issues that presently receive considerable attention. In a previous article, I wrote about the centralizing effects of anti-zoning laws and the preferable alternative of local control, or ideally, private control. As I wrote then, it is imperative that libertarians always reject any forms of centralization, even if the measure superficially appears to increase freedom. Let us consider the USMCA, which is billed as a free trade agreement. Of course, the truth is very different. In actual fact, the agreement usurps the power delegated to Congress in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution to regulate foreign trade by creating a supranational “free trade commission.” [12] Withdrawing from supranational agreements and organizations like this is one realistic way decentralization may proceed. This should be part of an overall libertarian strategy of nationalism based on what Rothbard called the genuine nation. [13] Indeed, as Jeff Deist urged, libertarians should seize on the rising nationalism throughout the West:
Yet libertarians are busy promoting universalism and centralization even as the world moves in the other direction. Trump and Brexit rocked the globalist narrative. Nationalism is on the rise throughout Europe, forcing the EU to defend itself, secession and breakaway movements exist in Scotland, in Catalonia, in Belgium, in Andalusia, even in California. Federalism and states’ rights are suddenly popular with progressives in the US. The world desperately wants to turn its back on Washington and Brussels and the UN and the IMF and all of the globalist institutions. Average people smell a rat. We should seize on this. [14]
While secession may still be years away, libertarians can begin by attempting to influence the culture in a way that is ultimately conducive to our ends. This was expounded on by Rothbard in one of final works:
it is important to begin, and particularly to change our political culture, which treats “democracy,” or the “right” to vote, as the supreme political good. . . . . In the modern world, democracy or voting is only important either to join in or ratify the use of the government to control others, or to use it as a way of preventing one’s self or one’s group from being controlled. Voting, however, is at best, an inefficient instrument for self-defense, and it is far better to replace it by breaking up central government power altogether. [15]
The importance of culture can’t be overstated. As Jeff Deist put it, “Culture leads, politics follows. There cannot be a political sea change in America unless and until there is a philosophical, educational, and cultural sea change.” [16] One way libertarians can create a culture conducive to decentralization is through strong local communities. This is one of the fundamental prerequisites for a successful decentralist strategy, but much more importantly, this allows for fulfilling lives to be led in the present, regardless of the state.
It should be clear why a successful libertarian strategy must reject politics in favor of a decentralist strategy. In pursuing this strategy, libertarians must also avoid the universalist trap Jeff Deist warned about. [17] As we have seen, one need not be a libertarian to support decentralization, and a successful movement must be cognizant of this fact and proceed accordingly. With the lessons learned from American history along with close families and communities and the principle of nullification to pave the way, we can once again begin to envision a future in which secession triumphs.
By: Matt Ray (@PaleoLiberty20)
1 See Hoppe, Democracy—The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2001), pp. 290-291.
2 See ibid, 291-292.
3 See Thomas E. Woods Jr., Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century (Washington: Regnery, 2010), p. 3
4 For more on the history of nullification in the United States, see ibid., especially chaps 2, 3 and 4. Woods briefly summarizes the essentials: “In short, the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, along with the follow-up Report of 1800 and Kentucky Resolutions of 1799, held that (1) the federal government had been created when sovereign states granted it afew enumerated powers; (2) any powers not so delegated remain reserved to the states or the people, a point expressly stated in the Tenth Amendment; and (3) should the federal government exercise a power it had not been delegated, the states ought to interpose—that is, they ought to stand between their own people on the one side and the federal government’s unconstitutional law on the other.” (p. 56)
5 See ibid, p. 16.
6 See Rothbard, “How and How Not to Desocialize,” Review of Austrian Economics 6, no. 1 (1992), on the former Soviet Union, Rothbard writes: “I owe to Dr. Yuri Maltsev the information that the much-vaunted Shatalin plan for the Soviet Union, which was supposed to bring about privatization and free markets in 500 days, was really not privatization at all. Apparently, existing government firms in each industry, instead of being actually privatized — that is, owned by private individuals — would have been owned (or 80 percent owned) by other firms in the same industry. This would mean that giant state monopoly firms would continue to be state monopoly firms, and be self-perpetuating oligarchies rather than truly privately owned. Privatization must mean private property.”; for a similar critique of desocialization in Germany see Hoppe, Desocialization in a United Germany,” Review of Austrian Economics 5, no. 2 (1991).
7 For more on determining legitimate titles to private property see Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York University Press, 1998), chap. 9, Rothbard writes: “To sum up, for any property currently claimed and used: (a) if we know clearly that there was no criminal origin to its current title, then obviously the current title is legitimate, just and valid; (b) if we don’t know whether the current title had any criminal origins, but can’t find out either way, then the hypothetically “unowned” property reverts instantaneously and justly to its current possessor; (c) if we do know that the title is originally criminal, but can’t find the victim or his heirs, then (c1) if the current title-holder was not the criminal aggressor against the property, then it reverts to him justly as the first owner of a hypothetically unowned property. But (c2) if the current titleholder is himself the criminal or one of the criminals who stole the property, then clearly he is properly to be deprived of it, and it then reverts to the first man who takes it out of its unowned state and appropriates it for his use. And finally, (d) if the current title is the result of crime, and the victim or his heirs can be found, then the title properly reverts immediately to the latter, without compensation to the criminal or to the other holders of the unjust title.” (pp.58-59).
8 See Hoppe, Democracy—The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2001), p. 126.
9 See ibid, p. 136.
10 See Rothbard, “How and How Not to Desocialize,” Review of Austrian Economics 6, no. 1 (1992).
11 See ibid.
12 See “USMCA More Info; The John Birch Society,” https://jbs.org/nau/usmca/usmca-info/; The John Birch Society got right to the heart of the matter: “the primary issue is not the economic impact of the USMCA, good or bad, but its destructive impact on U.S. sovereignty.”
13 See Rothbard, “Nations by Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State.” Journal of Libertarian Studies 11, No. 1 (1994): 1–10
14 See Deist, “For a New Libertarian,” Mises.org [July 28, 2017].
59 See Rothbard, “Nations by Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State.” Journal of Libertarian Studies 15, No. 1 (1994): 1–10
16 See Deist, “Secession Begins At Home,” Mises.org [January 30<sup>th</sup>, 2015].
17 See idem, “For a New Libertarian,” Mises.org [July 28, 2017]: “[T]he idea of universal libertarian principles became mixed up with the idea of universal libertarian politics. Live and let live was replaced with the notion of universal libertarian doctrine, often coupled with a cultural element. And because of this, libertarians often fall into the trap of sounding like conservatives and progressives who imagine themselves qualified to dictate political arrangements everywhere on earth. But what’s libertarian about telling other countries what to do? Shouldn’t our political goal should be radical self-determination, not universal values?”
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