Murray Rothbard was, of course, a huge fan of Lysander Spooner. Rothbard supported anarchist Benjamin Tucker as well but it seems Tucker shifted positions. Rothbard wrote about this in his “Introduction to Lysander Spooner: Libertarian Pietist, Vices are not Crimes”:
Yet, even in his own anarchist movement Spooner was the last of the Old Guard believers in natural rights; his successors in the individualist-anarchist movement, led by Benjamin R. Tucker, all proclaimed arbitrary whim and might-makes-right as the foundation of libertarian moral theory. And yet, Spooner knew that this was no foundation at all; for the State is far mightier than any individual, and if the individual cannot use a theory of justice as his armor against State oppression, then he has no solid base from which to roll back and defeat it.
Not only had natural law and natural rights given way throughout society to the arbitrary rule of utilitarian calculation or nihilistic whim, but the same degenerative process had occurred among libertarians and anarchists as well. Spooner knew that the foundation for individual rights and liberty was tinsel if all values and ethics were arbitrary and subjective.
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But… all values ARE subjective. And by what means could the State be defeated other than those which rely on might?
I think you are conflating the Austrian subjective theory of value and a rational, objective ethics. Rothbard, in The Ethics of Liberty, makes the case that an objectivist ethics is possible. This is political philosophy, not economics.
The state can be defeated by educating others, persuasion, and civil disobedience.
I am fully aware of Rothbard’s attempts and thoroughly unconvinced.
I think you’re missing a step:
1. Educate and persuade others and engage in civil disobedience.
2. ???
3. Defeat the state.
How does #1 lead to #3 specifically?
RWW,
I just found this article by Rothbard that addresses this to some degree:
http://murrayrothbard.com/how-to-destatize/
At first glance, that article seems to address Step 1 above, which is educating the masses. But what happens once they are educated?
In both of the examples Rothbard gives, the decisions of politicians to change policy were probably influenced most strongly by their fear of public opinion. But that’s just another kind of might.
RWW, before I speculate, what is it you are getting at?