The Hobbit and its significance for libertarians
On Dec. 16, Entertainment Weekly announced that the film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey brought in $84.6 million at the box office in its opening weekend, breaking the record for a film released during the month of December. The record was previously held by I Am Legend, which brought in $77.2 million in December 2007.
The movie was directed by Peter Jackson, who also directed the Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies released from 2001 to 2003. The movie begins with Bilbo explaining how Thror became King Under the Mountain in Erebor prior to the arrival of the dragon Smaug. Drawn by the gold of the dwarves, Smaug lays waste to Dale, a city of men near Erebor, then conquers Erebor and drives out the dwarves. The War of the Dwarves and Orcs is also shown as a backstory for Thorin Oakenshield, the leader of the dwarves in the party. The journey from the Shire to Carrock (with some differences in details) is shown in An Unexpected Journey, with the next two movies to show the rest of the story.
The story of The Hobbit is significant for libertarians, especially those with anarchist leanings, because it introduces the One Ring, which is one of the most accurate metaphors in all of literature for the anarchist view of the state. Although Tolkien always strongly held that his works should not be seen as a metaphor for anything, in one of Tolkien’s letters that was written in November 1943 while he was in a Royal Air Force training camp in Manchester, he wrote,
“My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) – or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inanimate realm of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate! If we could get back to personal names, it would do a lot of good. Government is an abstract noun meaning the an and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people. If people were in the habit of referring to ‘King George’s council, Winston and his gang’, it would go a long way to clearing thought, and reducing the frightful landslide into Theyocracy [sic].”
In the stories, The One Ring was created long ago for the purpose of increasing the power of its owner, allowing him to control the thoughts and deeds of lesser beings. This is precisely what the state does for those in positions of power. The power that the Ring gave was proportional to the power of the wearer, so the Ring worked to amplify existing power. Most libertarians view the state not as a source for evil, but as an amplifier for the existing tendencies toward evil in human nature. One who used the Ring too much would become wraith-like over time, demonstrating the old adage that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Ring caused those who possessed it to become obsessed with it, to such an extent that they might kill anyone who showed too much interest in it or attempted to touch the Ring. State power can do this to people who wield it, as can be seen with dictators in the Middle East and the way that they have dealt with protesters and rebels during the Arab Spring. Ultimately, the Fellowship of the Ring recognize that the Ring must be destroyed before it can enslave everyone in the world, and many anarchists tend to view government in the same fashion. Thus the Ring can be viewed as a libertarian and/or anarchist metaphor for the state.
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