Government protects us?

• Author: Higgs, Robert
• Position: Etceteras ...

When I was younger and even more ignorant than I am today, I believed that government (understood conventionally as a monopoly of legitimate coercive force in a given territory) performs an essential function--namely, the protection of individuals from the aggressions of others, whether those others be compatriots or foreigners--and that no other institution can perform this function successfully. Indeed, I once wrote a book whose very first sentence reads, "We must have government" (Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government [New York: Oxford University Press, 1987], 3). In holding this belief, I was merely plodding along the path of the great unreflective herd, although, to be sure, many philosophers, social scientists, and other deep thinkers have reached the same conclusion. Growing older, however, has given me an opportunity to reexamine the bases of my belief in the indispensability of the protective services of government (again, as conventionally understood). As I have done so, I have become increasingly skeptical, and I now am more inclined to disbelieve the idea than to believe it. More and more, the proposition strikes me as almost preposterous.

My skepticism springs in part from my improved understanding of just how horrendously destructive and murderous governments have been, not only by their involvement in wars with other governments, but more tellingly in their assaults on their own citizens. According to the statistics compiled by R. J. Rummel, governments probably caused the deaths of some 170 million of their own citizens between 1900 and 1987 (Death by Government [New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1994], 4), and the death toll has continued to rise during the past fifteen years. To this gruesome total must be added some 40 million others who perished in battle in the wars that the world's governments plunged their populations into during the twentieth century (ibid., 3).

Yes, yes, you may be saying, certain governments surely have acted murderously, but that bad behavior reflects not on government as such, but rather on the bad manners of the Chinese, the Russians, the Germans, and so forth. Or perhaps you are objecting that the fault lies not in government as such, but rather in communism, fascism, or some other ugly ideology that prompted the leaders of certain governments to misbehave so outrageously. These objections, however, cannot bear much weight, because the destructiveness of governments has spanned a huge range of ethnicity and of ideology. In control of egregious governments have been Chinese, Russians...