[| I, CWAS |]

Excellent Analysis. However, I have had the same disagreement with Hoppe and Anarcho-Capitalists for years. In a pure Anarcho-Capitalist society the natural elites will rise, as they should, however it is not too much of a supposition to point out that this will give rise to city-states. Humans are inter-dependent and contractualism will act as a filip to establish such states: For Instance, a group of Christians (lets say 300,000) who share similar values don't have a coercive state but they want to live around others who are like them (as most people do). The private territory will become ruled, purely, by the Christians. After sucessive generations become entrenched in the ways of such a Christian society, the role of natural elites and governing bodies also becomes entrenched.

I don't see anything wrong with that. I just think Anarcho-Capitalists avoid the logical conclusion of a purely contractual society.


Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State

It is Broken down into 10 sections
* Introduction
* Origin of Monarchy
* Power Monopolized
* Role of Intellectuals
* Rise of Democracy



* Fate of Natural Elites
* Fate of Intellectuals
* History & Ideas
* Role of Intellectuals
* Role of Natural Elites



It is a little long so I'll just post the Intro.

A state is a territorial monopolist of compulsion, an agency which may engage in continual, institutionalized property rights violations and the exploitation of private property owners through expropriation, taxation, and regulation.

But how do states come into existence? There are two theories on the origin of states. One view is associated with names such as Franz Oppenheimer, Alexander Ruestow, and Albert Jay Nock, and claims that states originated as the result of the military conquest of one group by another. This is the theory of the exogeneous origin of the state.

But this view has been severely criticized on historical as well as theoretical grounds by ethnographers and anthropologists such as Wilhelm Muehlmann. These critics point out that not all states originated from external conquest. Indeed, critics consider the view that the very first states were the result of nomadic herdsmen superimposing themselves on settled farmers as chronologically false. Moreover, this view suffers theoretically from the problem that conquest itself seems to presuppose a state-like organization among the conquerors. Hence, the exogeneous origin of states requires a more fundamental theory of the endogeneous origin of the state.

Such a theory has been presented by Bertrand de Jouvenel . According to his view, states are the outgrowth of natural elites: the natural outcome of voluntary transactions between private property owners is non-egalitarian, hierarchical, and elitist. In every society, a few individuals acquire the status of an elite through talent. Due to superior achievements of wealth, wisdom, and bravery, these individuals come to possess natural authority, and their opinions and judgments enjoy wide-spread respect. Moreover, because of selective mating, marriage, and the laws of civil and genetic inheritance, positions of natural authority are likely to be passed on within a few noble families. It is to the heads of these families with long-established records of superior achievement, farsightedness, and exemplary personal conduct that men turn with their conflicts and complaints against each other. These leaders of the natural elite act as judges and peacemakers, often free of charge out of a sense of duty expected of a person of authority or out of concern for civil justice as a privately produced "public good."

The small but decisive step in the transition to a state consists precisely of the monopolization of the function of judge and peacemaker. This occurred once a single member of the voluntarily acknowledged natural elite was able to insist, despite the opposition of other members of the elite, that all conflicts within a specified territory be brought before him. Conflicting parties could no longer choose any other judge or peacemaker.