Authority which exists only by virtue of moral suasion is authority in name only. In the name of public health, and of your and my individual health, the state has the authority to compel us to wear seatbelts in cars, and helmets when we ride donorcycles. If we choose not to comply with the laws requiring us to wear them, we have to pay the fines that go with disobeying the laws. The same goes with laws about speeding, etc. To my mind, these are entirely reasonable and democratic uses of authority; but for an anarchist as you describe him/her, this is illegitimate. To call these laws authoritarianism is, in my mind, to blur absolutely essential distinctions between a democratic, limited state and an undemocratic, authoritarian state. It does so because the individual is so sovereign in anarchist theory that the state can never compel him or her to do something s/he does not want to do. That is why I call it individualism and liberalism taken to its logical extremes.
The question of the doctor's authority is not so much whether or not she can compel you to do something against your will, although there are instances where she can, if you were not capable of rational decisionmaking on your own behalf, but the fact that the state authorizes her to perform upon you and other willing subjects all sorts of medical practices that it will not allow ordinary folks to do. Again, I think it is entirely reasonable that when your appendix needs to go, you have to go to a hospital, and not the corner barber, to have the procedure performed.
For the anarchist, as you describe her and yourself, the state is by its definition authoritarian. I am suggesting that there is a very important distinction to be made between an authoritarian and a democratic state.
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --
-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20010430/062aa14d/attachment.htm>