Instead of Violence

With Instead of Violence: The Case for the Non-Coercive Society, Leonard Read is in full anarcho-capitalist mode, identifying violence as the foundational characteristic of the state. At the start, Read notes that the choice any citizen of a state faces is obedience or death, for anyone who attempts to consistently resist the violence of the state will eventually look down the barrel of a gun.Read begins here, but ends Instead of Violence with an extended discourse on what is to be done, and what it means to be a proponent of liberty. Those who advocate for political solutions, Read tells us, should be dismissed immediately. For those who advocate for political solutions are simply employing the violent means of the state to attain supposedly libertarian ends.The alternative to the state and its violence, Read maintains, is to embrace love and the voluntary dependence on others that comes with the peaceful and free society.The battle for a society that turns to love instead of violence, can only be attained through learning, imagination, and humility, Read goes on, for the freedom activist who sees himself as the teacher, rather than as the student, will in fact teach nothing. The true freedom fighter seeks always to teach by example and to always increase his own understanding, while eschewing sloganeering about “reaching the man on the street” or “organizing,” which, in the end, are about avoiding personal responsibility.In this slim but dense volume, passionately argued, and expertly crafted, Read outlines both the true nature of the state and what is to be done about it.From police power, to public housing, to immigration control, and to the tariff, Read examines the coercive nature of all government actions which are fundamentally founded on violence and lays the foundation for living what he called “the freedom philosophy."