Don’t we need rules?

When one criticizes Law and Order or the state, one inevitably hears the question: "yes, but don't we need rules?"  One must first point out a conflation that takes place here. Rule and rules are different. We don’t know any good purpose that rule serves. Law and order is imposed by force and backed up by overwhelming violence. When we talk about a communal voluntary economy without being ruled, the criticism of communism is that we need rules: if there are no traffic laws, then people crash. If there aren't rules about temperatures to store food at, then people get sick. This sort of rebuttal confuses rule with conventions and agreements for living life in an expedient or rational manner; it has nothing to do with force and the violence to implement it. All the rules that are forced on us in a bourgeois democracy are looked at as useful conventions that make life possible. This is a big mistake. There’s a big difference between driving on the right side of the road and private property. Guys who make shoes are going to have to decide a standard shoe size. They will probably keep on doing what they have been doing unless some breakthrough occurs; how this changes is not our business; It's just a decision that has to be made by those doing the work.

 People are so used to the facts of state violence and courts that they cannot mentally strip the whole system of rule from the standards put into place. If you think about it: do you need nuclear weapons to decide that 12 inches makes a foot? Do you need men in camo suits with weapons to decide to shake hands when meeting someone new? But what is a state without weapons? Weapons are the means by which it forces everything. So, there is a basis, a reason for why people make the conflation between rules and rule. Some things take the form of traffic rules and some are nasty things; however, they are all combined under rule. Then people pick out the benign for the nasty aspects. E.g. how is it going to get decided how many inches are in a foot? Is this the same as somebody else is going to decide my life for me? Look at flood relief when the national guard comes in and tries to put sand bags along the river: do you need guys with guns to do it, or is it just they are there and ordered to do it?

We have no reason to change social conventions unless they stop being useful or rational; then it's time to deliberate about it. Then it's not a question of who, but why? Most standards are arbitrary anyway. Ordinary things like: time of day, measurement units, fashion choices, traffic practices, dietary practices, relationship practices-- they are just arbitrary and could be different. They don’t need rule. How a planned economy is going to work is nothing to discuss currently. If those who make it a reality want it, then they will decide how to do it. It's not for us to tell them how to do it. Rules are not the same thing as being ruled. Rules backed by force are backed by law.

So, one may then wonder: what does a state want from its people in general? It has a monopoly on force and uses this monopoly to rule this territory so they will produce wealth in a way the state can make use of. What does it require of people to go along with rule in order for it to be effective?

1) It makes rules you have to follow; decrees. It deals with my life and I have to go along with this.

2) If it makes the rules of living in a given law and order for how you keep yourself alive, whether as a worker or a banker, a serf or a lord, this order becomes not just something that rules, but you need this kind of rule. The rule is seen as a necessity by the people who are ruled. This is a real turn around. It's the basis for a stable rule. When everyone takes this point of view that we need this kind of rule, as serfs and barons, workers and managers, then they all get this unifying thing among these individuals, all need the same state; this is what they have in common and makes them a people. After making this point of view, they are really abstracting from their particular situation, they are -- like the banker or Donald Trump -- all in this together. They think "we have this in common." Then they are really getting away from how different they are and the different uses that the state has for them. The state imposes rule on people, forcing them into channels, as masters and servants, all differences are functional for the state, producing the wealth that the state can use in various ways when they regard themselves as people.