Thomas Hobbes once came up with a theory that later proved very useful for various statists. This is the theory of the state’s origin from the “war of all against all.” Supposedly, people wandered around like fools, bashing each other over the head. Then the state arose and brought order to things, and now only it may bash over the head, while everyone else may not. After that, good times came.
Today this theory, in its modified form, is used by institutionalism with its “stationary bandit.” Institutionalists believe that people voluntarily choose the “stationary bandit” because he is predictable and forced to care for them, unlike the “roving bandit,” who came, robbed, and ran away.
It must be said that Thomas Hobbes had a difficult life. He lived through an “age of change,” civil wars, and repressions. To some extent, his craving for “order” and a firm hand can be understood. As for the institutionalists, they themselves admit that the question “where, then, did the stationary bandit come from?” leaves them at a loss. But, nevertheless, the idea of the war of all against all—which supposedly preceded the state and will immediately ensue if, God forbid, it, the state, dies—is one of the most popular today.
Meanwhile, if one looks closely, it is not difficult to discover that the situation is precisely the opposite. We live in an era of the war of all against all. And the state is precisely the source of this pleasure.
Once I was riding in a taxi with a friend, telling him about how the head of Kyiv, Popov, was once again trying to deprive Kyivites of cheap taxis (at that moment, police officers were attacking the servers of carriers). Imagine my surprise when our driver came to the defense of the Kyiv official. His argument was that he had paid for a license, while all sorts of others drive around without licenses. Therefore, they must be banned. That is, it does not even occur to him that if buyers see no difference between a licensed taxi driver and an unlicensed one, then this is the only natural state of affairs. Because taxis exist not for the license, but for transporting passengers; consumers pay the taxi driver for delivery from point A to point B, not for the presence of a license.
Such examples can be found at every step. But the most telling is taxation—namely, the fact that people receiving their income from the budget nevertheless pay taxes. Budget organizations also pay taxes. I think that the tax administration, or whatever it is called now, also pays taxes. I would also charge it with income tax, but that’s already details; what matters is the very fact of the obvious absurdity. The fact that we do not notice it out of habit does not cancel the absurdity of what is happening.
Why does this absurdity exist, and exist everywhere, not only in God-protected Ukraine? It exists precisely because of the organization of the war of all against all. States cannot allow clear identification of, for example, donors and recipients of the state budget. For them, it is important that we all be slightly donors and slightly recipients simultaneously. Since each hopes to be less of a donor and more of a recipient, he vigilantly watches to ensure that another gets less and he himself gets more, and happily helps the state to stop, grab, and prohibit. Those very licenses that create no competitive advantages—those that do not lead to benefits for consumers that they would agree to pay for—compel license holders, together with the state, to fight “shadow operators” and so on.
As a result, each of us is always slightly a victim and slightly an aggressor. In Ukraine, and in other places too, social conflict exists not between the “rich” and the “poor,” and certainly not between “power” and “the people.” It exists among all members of society for the right to pick another’s pocket and pry into their personal life. And if this is not the war of all against all, then I do not know what else to call it.