Most of us assume that governments may make laws and that citizens must obey them. Anarchists and many libertarians ask a question that is surprisingly hard to answer: what gives anyone the right to rule over anyone else? This course follows the thinkers who pressed that question hardest, the movements they inspired, and the strongest replies of their critics.

What a state is

In a 1919 lecture, “Politics as a Vocation,” the German sociologist Max Weber defined the state as a human community that successfully claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. The key word is legitimate: the state claims not just the power to coerce but the right to do so.

Three separate questions

Philosophers separate three questions. A state may be justified, meaning it is better to have one than not. It may be legitimate, meaning it has the right to issue binding commands to particular people. And citizens may have political obligation: a moral duty to obey the law because it is the law, not merely because what it requires is right anyway. You already have reason not to commit murder. The puzzle is whether you have an extra reason to obey a rule just because the state made it, such as a speed limit on an empty road at three in the morning.

Four classic answers

• Consent. John Locke argued in his Second Treatise of Government (1689) that legitimate government rests on the consent of the governed. Few people ever actually agree, so Locke appealed to tacit consent: by living in a country and enjoying its protection, you accept its rule. In “Of the Original Contract” (1748), David Hume replied that a poor peasant who knows no foreign language and has little money cannot really choose to leave. He compared such a person to someone carried aboard a ship while asleep, who hardly consents to the captain's rule by not leaping into the ocean.
• Gratitude. In Plato's Crito, Socrates refuses to escape his execution partly because the laws of Athens raised and educated him. Critics reply that unrequested benefits do not usually create a debt of obedience.
• Fair play. The philosophers H. L. A. Hart and John Rawls argued that people who benefit from a cooperative scheme in which others restrain themselves have a duty to do their share. Robert Nozick objected that others cannot load obligations onto you simply by handing you benefits you did not choose.
• Natural duty. Rawls also argued that we have a natural duty to support just institutions that apply to us. Critics ask why that duty ties you to your own state rather than to just institutions everywhere.

Philosophical anarchism

Some philosophers conclude that none of these arguments succeeds and that there is no general moral duty to obey the law simply because it is the law. This view is called philosophical anarchism. Robert Paul Wolff, in In Defense of Anarchism (1970), argued that a person who acts on commands just because they are commands gives up the moral autonomy every adult should keep. A. John Simmons argued that existing states, though they may be justified, are not legitimate in the strict sense.

Philosophical anarchism is a claim about duties, not a call to overthrow anything. Most laws forbid things that are wrong anyway, and there can be good reasons to cooperate with a decent government even without a duty of obedience.

From doubt to movement

The word anarchy comes from the Greek anarchia, meaning “without a ruler.” Anarchists stress that this means no rulers, not no rules or chaos. Political anarchism holds that the state is harmful and should be replaced by voluntary cooperation. Libertarians usually accept some state but want it strictly limited. What unites them is suspicion of concentrated coercive power.

Worked example: the seawall levy

Imagine a coastal town whose council votes to build a seawall and charges every household a levy to pay for it. Mara, a resident, voted against the plan and never agreed to the council's authority. Does she have a duty to pay simply because the council has ordered it? Run through the answers in this level.

• Consent. Mara never signed anything. The council might say she consented tacitly by living in town and using its roads. Hume's reply applies: if leaving would cost Mara her job, family and home, staying is weak evidence of agreement.
• Gratitude. The town schooled Mara as a child. But does a gift she never requested oblige her to obey every future order?
• Fair play. This is stronger. If neighbors pay and the wall protects Mara's house too, refusing her share looks like taking advantage of their restraint. Nozick's reply: she never chose to join the scheme, and the wall might be worth less to her than the levy.
• Natural duty. If the town's institutions are reasonably just, Mara may have a duty to support them. Why this town rather than any just town? Because these are the institutions that actually apply to her.

A philosophical anarchist might conclude that Mara has no duty to pay merely because the council said so. Yet she may still have excellent reasons to pay: fairness to neighbors, the value of the wall, and the harm a collapse of local cooperation would cause. Notice how the question shifts from “Must I obey?” to “What do I owe the people around me?” That shift runs through the whole anarchist tradition.