Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

What we call statism might be defined as the violent institutionalization of criminals as the “legal authorities” of society into a political system known as “the government.” Statism might also be thought of as the supporting ideology that underlies this political system, which holds that some men, calling themselves “the government,” must have a coercive monopoly over given goods and services (law, protection, schools) that everyone else must be forced to pay into and accept. As the Christian anarchist Kevin Craig thus explains statism,

“The State is a group of individuals who can steal from and kill a selected target of people without expecting any other group to be willing or able to stop them.”

Despite the old adage that all empires must fall, many people (even Christians who should know better) nevertheless place their saving faith in these systems of men “in the meantime,” telling us that human rulers are needed for the maintenance of social order here on earth. Statism is a sort of cognitive dissonance where you know on one hand that it can’t last forever, but you suppress this truth for the much stronger (and false) conviction that it is “necessary” to organize society.

We may present a number of secular-economic reasons why statism doesn’t work, eg., that States are non-producers who earn their revenues by robbing people and so do not contribute any wealth to society but only subtract from private production. As opposed to those who think that government spending (which comes from robbing private production) can enrich society, the economist Murray Rothbard writes,

“The truth is exactly the reverse of the common assumptions [that government spending enriches the economy]. Far from adding cozily to the private sector, the public sector can only feed off the private sector; it necessarily lives parasitically upon the private economy. But this means that the productive resources of society—far from satisfying the wants of consumers—are now directed, by compulsion, away from these wants and needs. The consumers are deliberately thwarted, and the resources of the economy diverted from them to those activities desired by the parasitic bureaucracy and politicians. In many cases, the private consumers obtain nothing at all, except perhaps propaganda beamed to them at their own expense. In other cases, the consumers receive something far down on their list of priorities…In either case, it becomes evident that the ‘public sector’ is actually anti-productive: that it subtracts from, rather than adds to, the private sector of the economy. For the public sector lives by continuous attack on the very criterion that is used to gauge productivity: the voluntary purchases of consumers.”

Economic theory and God’s law

For all these economic explanations we may supply, the real reason that statism fails is much more basic, and I believe stronger than such secular arguments. Statism doesn’t work because it is in grievous violation of God’s law order, because it is a substitution of the “laws” of men (“give me your money or get in a cage”) for the natural and prescribed order of God of loving your neighbors and granting peace to others.

Nowhere in the scriptures are men commanded to rob and murder, not even if they call themselves a “government” and put on badges and silly costumes to make it appear more legitimate. 

The real foundation that men ought to fall back on for a case against the workability of statism, far more than the economic or ethical argument, is thus saith the Lord. The word of God tells us that these plunder societies aren’t workable, only leave men desolate, and must come to an end, since they have originated and sustained themselves in theft, violence, and idolatry — in other words, in violations of God’s law order. Furthermore, the very existence of States, which men set up in their rebellion to God, as well as the destruction that they bring to society, is proof for the existence of God.

From both an economic and theological perspective, States plunder societies and economies until they (respectively) become entirely unproductive and the judgment by God for the sin of statism is manifest. Being based in robbery, States drain their economies for all they’re worth and roll back progress and prosperity. As Rothbard said of their impact on economic progress, “This siphoning not only subtracts from the number producing but also lowers the producer’s incentive to produce beyond his own subsistence” (Rothbard, Anatomy of the State, p. 15). The plunder of the State, which is said to be used to enrich other people, actually just disincentivizes production, which is the only source of prosperity in society that could have actually gone to help people.

Blessings and curses

Those who are obedient to God, i.e., those who avoid the political means of social organization which we know as economists only brings impoverishment, will open themselves to divine blessings upon their society. As God promises,

“If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments so as to carry them out, then I shall give you rains in their season, so that the land will yield its produce and the trees of the field will bear their fruit” (Leviticus 26:3-4). 

But those who are disobedient and choose plunder systems will destroy production and, therefore, prosperity and peace along with it. 

Out of the two ways of coming about property or goods, i.e., by (1) production and exchange or (2) robbery of producers, the State is (2) in the latter category of choosing theft and violence over peaceful trade and association, and therefore involved in one giant scheme to destroy capital, discourage production, redistribute wealth, hamper free trade, and get people down. 

It’s just a basic economic fact that plunder is going to hamper production and thus make everyone (relatively) poorer than they would be if there we no theft of production by a State. Even if absolute wealth has risen over time, economic intervention has still stifled it more than it would have been without it; we would have been even more prosperous if there were no intervention. Thus the argument that we have grown richer (in absolute terms) over time is still not a case for the State or a good look for democracy. These were still forces of relative impoverishment.

But it is also the word of God that these plunder systems can’t stand and are guaranteed to go the way of Sodom and Gomorrah, which must’ve been an awful sight. 

Statism against God

But even without economics, we can discern why statism must destroy and fail. All of the ways in which to characterize the nature of the State—it is based in theft, murder, violence, idolatry for rulers—are against the commandments of God and are an abomination to the Lord.

The idols, busks of politicians, statues, flags, and other things statists craft with their hands and dedicate to their false gods, are “an abomination to the LORD thy God” (Deuteronomy 7:25). 

God does not approve of the evil activities associated with statism, from the religious worship that is seen when men root for politicians to rule over them to the physical evils of violence and war. “The way of the wicked is an abomination unto the LORD” (Proverbs 15:9). 

When God looks down upon a statist order with its false god rule, He thinks of “the abomination that they have done here [to] have filled the land with violence” (Ezekiel 8:17).

We are commanded to avoid theft, murder, idolatry, etc. And since statism is based on these things, statism is abhorrent to the Lord and thus necessarily punished.

Jesus tells us that the violent system of the statist masses, who pretend to take care of people but disguise their violence through this false benevolence, is not what God’s people are to be about. He says, reminding His people of their role compared to the political systems of the world, “You know that those regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their superiors exercise authority over them. But it shall not be this way among you” (Mark 10:42-43). Christians are called to be anarchists, ie., men who do not adopt the means of political violence for providing for their families and neighbors but who do it themselves through networks of voluntary exchange and private charity. 

The ways of political violence are not the ways of God’s kingdom, and that’s why all we get is destruction when these paths are pursued.

Disobedience to God and negative sanctions

Thus while we can demonstrate through philosophical reasoning or economic logic that statism and socialism (the same thing) are bound to destroy and fail, that to attempt to violate the market ethics of voluntary exchange and the moral law of peace unto your neighbors ends in disaster, the real reason that statism necessarily and inevitably brings great evils upon society is that it’s a violation of God’s law, and that disobeying God—robbing and killing your neighbors—must result in negative consequences (famine, conflict, violence, prisons, war, police states, surveillance states, wars on the people). 

What secularist market economists identify as the economic effects of statism and socialism are in effect the judgments of God upon a disobedient people who are attempting to violate His social law. God, the Chief Economist of the World, has built it into the providential law that statism, ie., violent political intervention into the natural and harmonious order as He created it, must bring ruin.

We must either choose (1) the laws of God (love the Lord, don’t hit people, don’t take their stuff, hurt don’t them, and love your neighbor), which brings us liberty and prosperity; or (2) the “laws” of men (the arbitrary claim of “whatever the State say is ‘law’ is law”), which leads to oppression and tyranny. Since we have chosen the latter, we are paying the price for it today. 

There is a clear connection between violating God’s law of liberty—that social and economic harmony exists only in a natural order that is not plagued by legal plunderers—and peace and prosperity. And once we have established that all governments are based on theft (as a regular matter of operation and in their original conception), it is easy to see why they don’t work: they are violations of God’s moral law. 

Economics and God

Strictly speaking, we don’t even need to write long treatises on why violent intervention into the free economic system of men and their brothers must fail. Statism doesn’t work, if only because God says it doesn’t. But there is every “economic” and “ethical” ground to see why it must fail, too. 

The commandments against theft and murder were not just personal instruction (though they are that too), but a socio-political ethic. If individual theft is bad, then all the worse is legal theft carried out by groups of individuals proclaiming a right to steal. Theft is much worse when it’s called “taxation” and supported by threats of violence that have the name of “law” on their side and thugs in blue to uphold it, because then it’s widespread, systematic, and regular theft against a people, as opposed to the scattered crimes that would be relatively rare, random, and irregular, without the legal plunder of the State to institutionalize and regularize it.

Taxation thus means that whole social orders are based on theft. And since we know that it doesn’t work to base a society on theft (because it’s against God’s law), we know that tax-based “social” orders do not work either. Statism is nothing more than legal plunder, or as Rothbard said, its foundation in taxation is “theft on a grand scale and colossal scale.”

It is basing “societies” on theft (e.g., taxation) that destroys people. God punishes those people who rob other people’s property and call themselves a “government” as a means of providing some false legal cover for their plunder operation. As one prophet made clear, “Woe to him who amasses what is not his” (Habakkuk 2:6). These are the men who plunder private property and create a world of legal privileges through their political systems, holding the rest of humanity captive to their schemes. 

Since theft (and legalized theft all the more) is in opposition to God’s law, those who think they can build sustainable social orders based on taxation/theft and the “lawmaking” of men (e.g., States) are condemned from the start. Even if they may go on for some time in their rebellion and destruction, which God allows as a form of punishing men, eventually they come to nought (Isa 40:23; 1 Cor 2:6). You can’t build a society on robbing people (taxation) and beating, caging, or killing them if they resist your arbitrary demands. As one prophet said,

“Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by iniquity!” (Habakkuk 2:12).

Tax-funded social orders, with socialist police, socialist militaries, and socialist everything else, do not work. They only lead to a “society” where some men have been given “authority” to beat those who disobey them in the enforcement of “legal” decrees that destroy justice, freedom, and social order in general, and that are designed to substitute the dictates of men for the word of God. 

God promises to do extensive damage to those people who chose (2) the path of disobedience and plunder (Lev 26:14-39). He brings famines and war upon statists who are so foolish as to believe that Pharaoh feeds and protects people, rather than to place their faith in God for protection and sustenance. 

But He also remembers those who repent (Lev 26:40-46). He saves those who obey Him and order their societies according to His law word, as opposed to the tyrannies of men. As God tells the obedient,

“I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the produce of the field, so that you will not receive again the disgrace of famine among the nations” (Ezekiel 36:30). 

Positive sanctions

The only way to have a peaceful and proserous society is for the Lord God to be our Sovereign, and for us to never believe that human rulers, claiming to be our protectors and providers, should build cement structures for themselves (and for us) and rule over us. 

When God’s people are freed from plunder systems, all our problems that are caused by statist plunder—taxes, rising prices, poverty, crime, war, incarceration, labor camps, inequalities created through legal privileges, etc—will begin to be healed. 

In a society centered around God, men would no longer be controlled (and thus owned) by men calling themselves “the authorities,” and the robbers of property will no longer be able to destroy men who try to make a living for themselves, because they would be without the power to do so. It is only through the existence of the political apparatus, and the ideological support that stands behind it, that some men, calling themselves a “government,” are able to have the machinery in which to rob people. The argument that the existence of criminals requires a State is entirely confused: it is the State that empowers the existence of criminals and expands their potential for robbery far beyond their wildest dreams as an open street criminal who has to carry out his robbery in plain sight.

None of this would be possible without men denying God and accepting the falsehood that men must rule over them to be safe and free. The taxation and slavery we live under today is a curse by God for embarking upon the statist path. The inevitable effects of statism as an institution is what you get for statism as an ideology. The spiritual and intellectual support for state rulers brings evils.

The tyranny of statism has come because men chose to deviate from the path that God provided for us. Contrary to those who tell us that we wouldn’t be safe and secure without a State to protect us, being under God’s protection means precisely that we would no longer the slaves of men. It is trusting in God that drives our enemies away, not trusting in governments, which brings them. Not only would God directly provide for us if we abandoned the false protection rackets of men that are called “governments,” but nor would there be any tyranny without them, as that is how God, the Author of the economic law, has ordered our social world. God sends tyrants to those who ask for them, not those who live freely and obey the Lord.

As one prophet saw of this kingdom, 

“The tree of the field will yield its fruit and the earth will yield its increase, and they will be secure on their land. Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I have broken the bars of their yoke and have delivered them from the hand of those who enslaved them. They will no longer be a prey to the nations, and the beasts of the earth will not devour them; but they will live securely, and no one will make them afraid. I will establish for them a renowned planting place, and they will not again be victims of famine in the land, and they will not endure the insults of the nations anymore” (Ezekiel 34:27-29). 

The fate of statism

Far from being God’s order or plan for men, or anything that is sustainable or ethical or just on its own, the State is precisely the relentless target of God’s judgment throughout the scriptures, who pours His wrath down on kings, princes, and those who fall for their schemes of obtaining (allegedly) social order through political violence. 

And far from being in support of these violent statist societies (as “God and country” men think), they are what gets destroyed when God has seen enough.

“This is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Woe to the city of bloodshed! I, too, will pile the kindling high” (Ezekiel 24:9).

A large part of the scriptural narrative—from Cain’s city-state in defiance of the Lord, to Nimrod’s Babel, to the call for kings to rule them (1 Samuel), to the Caesars of Rome—is one big demonstration of the evils and eventual ruins of all of those who chose the systems of men to run their societies instead of to have God as their Lord and King.

So even if we set the economics and ethics aside, statism must always fall for at least the reason that it’s part of God’s eschatological plan for all political plunder to come to an end (1 Cor 15:24; Dan 2:44). God likes to do to statists just what they do to us: destroy them. As one prophet says,

“All who devour you will be devoured; and all your adversaries, every one of them, will go into captivity; and those who plunder you will be for plunder, and all who prey upon you I will give for prey” (Jeremiah 30:16). 

While economics and philosophy may bring one to the same conclusions (though more often than not secular reasoning leads men to statism), it is good enough for us that it’s God’s word that the kingdoms of men are always brought down. 

Those people who hide kidnappers and predators behind the bushes and on their highways and call it “law enforcement” are the societies that go down. “Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without prey” (Nahum 3:1). It is people that erect plunder societies who are the ones that get destroyed. We have it on God’s word. It is written, statism must always destroy and fail. 

Economic theory and God’s word

While God has provided us all that we need to know about the inevitable failure of statism through His word, men have not acquainted themselves with it enough to see it. Or they were still so minded in secular-statist philosophy that they were unable to see it when they did make a pass over it. Others, of course, don’t even read the Bible and never sought divine wisdom. 

For this reason, learning the failure of statism from a secular perspective, from free market anarchists, can (unfortunately?) aid in one’s understanding of God’s political economy. If one read Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State and Power & Market, and then read Isaiah through Malachi, it seems almost impossible that they wouldn’t be able to realize the anarchist political theology of God—that we are to have no God but God—or the more or less secularization of these latter books that far predated the former works of the 20th century. 

While we may wish people would get it from God and see it there, the statism that pervades our world and thus most men’s thinking causes many to struggle to see the word that God has given us through His prophets. They are so caught up in a multitude of delusions that appeal to statists of all stripes—“we could never do without our military” (if you’re a dumb conservative) or “we need government to help the poor” (if you’re a dumb democrat)—that they can’t understand God’s relentless examples of judgment upon statist societies.

Since such secular works as mentioned above may aid one in their understanding of God, we shouldn’t neglect the use of economic theory and libertarian anarchist philosophy in teaching men the political schemes before us, as it helps to explain the nuances of why such violent intervention impoverishes us. Economists like Ludwig von Mises provide a lot of intellectual ammunition to combat the socialist ideology, and help to explain it as yet another statist scheme. Considering the fact that so many people deny God, it is great that economists like Mises show that socialism is an economic impossibility.

But once one realizes that this fantasy of utopia-through-plunder is nothing more than another political scheme, nothing more than another imagined and artificial order dreamed up by some overt and unrepentant sinners who are attempting to defy the natural laws of God, the possibility that socialism is workable dies on this hill. Statism is to fight not just against the laws of economics, narrowly conceived, but to fight against God.  

There is no chance that any statist scheme can do anything more than get violently established and put over in conspiracy, destroy a bunch of things as it grows, kill a bunch of people, and then fail — because it is set out against God in a vain and doomed attempt at succeeding.