In my presentation, I begin by addressing why people believe they have a moral, at least a practical duty to pay taxes by focusing on what actions on the part of the state have brought about and sustained this belief.
I then discuss the ethical consequences of holding and acting on such a belief from two angles.
First, with an eye towards the effects the methods employed by the state to bring about such a belief has on a society and its members,
as well as with an eye towards ethical implications for people acting on such a belief,
Finally, I address why evading taxes is an ethical imperative here and I consider the
ethical benefits for the individuals who evade paying taxes and for the culture of a society.
In this section, I address the dual question of what kind of people can successfully evade
Paying Taxes and How Tax Evasion Can Be Done Effectively.
Nearly every student of the state recognizes it as an institution that claims a monopoly
on the legitimate use of force. However, only the more keen observers have gone beyond this
definition to see the state as the ultimate exploiter of the people that acquires its
In other words, it steals from the subjects of its domination in order to fund its domination
of them. As Rothbard and other Austrians have demonstrated, coercive exchange necessarily
leads to an asymmetry of gains, with the coercer gaining at the expense of the coerced. Therefore,
since we assume human agents act to further their own interests, then human agents would
only put up with or support involuntary exchanges if one of two conditions is met. Either, the
possesses a superior degree of material force relative to the exploited agent, or the exploited
agent does not recognize his exploitation as such. The first condition holds for the relationship
between the state and each individual subject, but not for the state relative to the whole
exploited population. Therefore, if a group of political subjects each recognized they
were collectively being exploited, then they would have a great incentive to work in concert
to throw off their oppressor. As Mises aptly notes, though a tyrant may temporarily rule
In the long run, a minority cannot keep the majority in subservience. The oppressed will
rise in rebellion and cast off the yoke of tyranny. The precarious nature of political
rule, therefore, requires that the subjects not recognize that they are being exploited.
To this end, the political elite must imbue their subjects' mental complex with categories
that make these subjects view the state's exercises of power as non-exploitive and legitimate.
When I speak of one's method complex, I am referring to what Bourdieu calls a person's
habitus or his schemas of perception and action. Mises refers to it as one's world view or
ideology. As Mises puts it, a world view is on the one hand an explanation of all phenomena
and on the other hand a technology. World views interpret the universe and they advise
men on how to act. With that being said, we can understand why the state's employment
One of what Bourdieu calls symbolic violence can lead to subjects becoming willing participants
in their own domination. Symbolic violence is defined as the act of imposing schemas of
perception and action into an agent's mental complex. While symbolic violence like physical
violence can potentially be employed by many different agents or institutions, what Bourdieu
demonstrates is that the state, owing to its incredible volume of symbolic capital, has
an effective monopoly on the legitimate use of symbolic violence. Symbolic capital refers
In other words, the possession of symbolic capital gives one the power to shape reality
to the extent that one can take advantage of symbolic capital to impress different categories
into an individual's perceptual schemes through which he interprets and decides how to operate
in reality.
However, these categories must have some referent in reality, even if, in itself, this referent
fails to fully conform to its referential category, because the agent, if the category
is sufficiently embodied, likely will ignore the differences between the two and read in
from the category what is not there in the object.
The volume of symbolic capital an agent or institution possesses determines the degree
to which its classification schemes are internalized by those upon whom it is imposed.
By volume, I am referring to how much and how many people, relatively speaking, respect
or honor a given institution.
By the degree of internalization, I am referring to both how ingrained in people's habitats
a given set of classification schemes are and, relatively, how many people have this
given set of classification schemes ingrained in their mental complex.
It's clear that the modern Western state has acquired more honor, or symbolic capital,
both in terms of intensity and breadth than any other social organism because it has positioned
has seen itself as the primary and most necessary agent of social order and social progress.
This prominent position has allowed the state to succeed in its efforts at impressing its
data schemas of perception and action deep into the mental complexes and dispositions
of its subjects. In this way, the state has succeeded in gently forcing its subjects into
believing that they have a moral obligation to pay taxes. In my paper, I demonstrate how
the state succeeded in positioning itself as a divine entity. In Europe, this was the
are the results of the state taking advantage of the growing level of nihilism that accompanied the collapse of Christendom that began during the Renaissance.
In the United States, religious and secular post-millennialists, with the help of big businesses and political elites, succeeded in presenting the state to the public as the means by which the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth could be brought about.
I refer to Nietzsche's and Oakeshott's work in my description of the developments that occurred in Europe,
In both the United States and Europe, the means the state employed, through which it claimed it could bring about this heaven on earth, consisted of welfare programs, universal public education, a massive state bureaucracy, economic regulations, and central bank, among others.
By establishing these institutions, the state has succeeded in offering objective reality
to the view of the state as the divine. Thus, such a view of the state acquires a self-evident
status for a great many people. Of course, some Westerners clearly do not view the state
as a divinity, but nearly every Westerner at least believes that only the state can
provide the order necessary for the functioning of society. The latter belief stems from the
The fact that since the 17th century, the state has succeeded in crushing the major
vestiges of intermediate power and in absorbing into its ever-expanding bureaucratic apparatus
the functions of a great many of them. The state's effective displacement of most intermediary
institutions has placed it in an immediate relation to individuals, thus offering objective
confirmation of the state's classification of itself as necessary for the sake of social
Order. In this way, such a classification has come to be embodied by subjects such that
it appears evidently true. The State has obtained what Bourdieu calls a monopolization of the
universal as a consequence of its success in incarnating its divinity and social necessity
in objectivity in the forms of specific institutional structures and in subjectivity in the form
of mental categories. Three important features of the modern Western State play an essential
have a central role in solidifying the state's universal position, including the bureaucracy, the status of economists as high priests, the democratic form of government, and the public school system.
The state's bureaucracy consists of a set of individuals tasked with disinterestedly and rationally employing the state's resources to realize the interests of the whole.
Economics is believed to be the means by which society can be perfected, and it possesses
the air of objectivity because of its seemingly scientific methodology. Therefore, the high
status of the contemporary economist and their close alliance with the state contributes
to people's belief that the state acts to realize the general interest while also being
is incapable of doing so because it has the scientists of society working for it. As Rothbard
argues, the increasing use of scientific jargon has permitted the state's intellectuals to
weave obscure ontis apologia for a state rule that would have only met with derision by
the populace of a simpler age. Democracy has greatly contributed to Westermann's belief
that the state possesses a universal and impartial status because its institutional features,
Public schools function as one of the prime sites for the state's molding of the minds
of its subjects. One aspect of this indoctrination consists of teaching students official history
that depicts the state as the defender of the people from foreign threats and the progenitor
The State uses its schools to introduce its young subjects to its dichotomous classification
system of people. On one side they are the subjects and on the other are the authorities,
with the latter defined as inherently good and the former divided into two groups, the
deviant and the obedient. The State's classification of people comes to be embodied by students
in the course of their schooling because the production of official records and the hierarchical
relationship between students, teachers and administrators gives objective reality to
This kind of statist framing takes place throughout society, with the state having infiltrated all features of society with its symbols, as well as with and in part because of its pronounced and ever-growing material presence in society.
Since the public believes the state exists either to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth or to maintain the social order, then it follows that most everyone also believes that it is a moral imperative, or at least a practical imperative,
to provide the state with its means of existence. This translates into the belief that everyone
who earns an income or has some level of wealth is obligated to pay taxes unless the state
beneficently grants them an exception. This widespread belief is the legitimating source
or basis of the state's power to viciously punish and morally condemn tax evaders. In
fact, the masses, fully imbued with the spirit of equality, are thoroughly convinced that
The Mass Man, blinded by the mystical vision of the state, used civilization as a gift
from the state, and thus for him, taxes are what all citizens owe in exchange.
For the Mass Man, people who refuse to pay taxes are refusing to sacrifice for the public
good, are challenging the very essence of the Mass Man's world vision, and are leveling
an assault on the social order.
It is even claimed by many that tax evasion is tantamount to stealing from the public.
Moreover, I find that subjects of Western nation states have been habituated to obey the directives of authorities.
This phenomenon is a product of the framing the state imposes upon practices throughout the social order in the form of its dichotomous classification system.
From its universal standpoint, the state is capable of performing, in Bourdieu's words,
A Diagnostic. That is, an act of knowledge or cognition which begets recognition and which, quite often, tends to assert what a person or a thing is and what it is universally. For every possible person, thus objectively, administrative discourse says, through directives, orders, prescriptions, etc., what people have to do, given what they are. It says what people have actually done, as in authorized accounts such as police records. In effect, the state has made most of its subjects predisposed to heeding what Bourdieu labels
calls to order, which when issued, awaken these deeply buried corporeal dispositions.
For our purposes, when it comes time to, or the order is issued for one to pay taxes,
one does so without questioning the legitimacy of so doing, or without undertaking a cost-benefit
analysis of compliance. This is because calls to order, in that they awaken corporeal dispositions,
function outside the channels of consciousness and calculation, making such considerations
is technically inconceivable and viewed as absurd if proposed by an other.
A foregoing section gestured at the fact that the state's imposition of classification
systems serves to cripple the human spirit, replacing rational and creative agents with
herd animals. Nietzsche calls this bureaucratization of spirit the liquidation of particularity.
And such is the intended goal of the state, for only then can it succeed in having people
will willingly sacrifice their hard earnings to the state so that it can acquire the means to oppress them.
The masked man that the state has forged possesses the characteristics of the weak man or herd animal that Nietzsche speaks of in his Genealogy of Morals.
These herd animals, and by extension, masked men, tend to despise the freedom to choose because in the course of acting freely they are forced to acknowledge with revulsion their own impotence.
And as Nietzsche teaches, the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one covets
someone who commands, who commands severely, a god, prince, class, physician, father,
confessor, dogma, or party conscience.
As well, the existence of noble types serves to constantly remind lower types of the inferiority
and thus they tend to loathe and to desire to enact revenge on such people.
Nietzsche refers to this petty desire for revenge as the basis of what he calls resente
and we can certainly find it heavily present and widely cultivated in our
modern democracies where for evidence one need only consider things like its
state taxes and progressive taxation which the public rapidly supports while
seething at the mouth. What we therefore find as a consequence of the state's
inculcation of status schemas of perception and action in its subjects is
the progressive destruction of what Nietzsche calls sovereign types or
strong individuals who create their own moral laws and ways of being that push
In this way, society becomes ever more subject to status control and becomes easier for the state to collect the taxes that enables it to minister its exploitation far and wide, sometimes beyond the borders of its territory.
Finally, the state's dichotomous classification system that has become thoroughly entwined
with the fabric of society molds men into inauthentic role-players who display a paralyzing
over-concern about possible causes, meanings and consequences of acts and an unending dialogue
about what others might think, expect, say or do.
This role-playing forecloses genuine attachment to others and undermines this type of act
as integrity, decisiveness and spontaneity.
Depending on the belief that one has a duty to pay taxes, these ones unwittingly fund
his own domination. Moreover, paying taxes inclines one to view oneself as invested in
the state's activities and thus makes one more disposed to support the state's war
on society. In this way, one stains one's own hands with the blood of those who are
victims of the state's aggression. The liquidation of particularity, the progressive forging
of mass men, the progressive destruction of sovereign individuals, and the public's enthusiastic
support for the state's worn society all serve to push a given society's culture into the
lowest depths of cultural decadence.
As Nietzsche pointedly stated, a time that stakes its salvation on public opinions, that
is on private laziness, will one day really be killed, by which I mean it will be stricken
from the history of the true liberation of life.
The cultural bankruptcy and erosion of the human spirit brought on by the state's success
in engraining in its subjects the belief that they have a duty to pay taxes is itself a
sufficient reason for people to evade paying taxes. If the number of people evading paying
taxes reaches a critical mass, we will see a steady collapse of the state, which will
serve as the permissive condition for the unleashing of pent-up spiritual force that
will invigorate individuals and reverse the given society's trend towards cultural
decadence. However, I acknowledge that such an undertaking requires great effort, and
Currently, most of our fellow men and women are incapable of even contemplating the need to evade paying taxes, let alone openly opposing the state.
What our time then requires is that those few remaining sovereign types, who recognize the absurdity and deleterious consequences of believing in the duty to pay taxes, offer a clear and distinct challenge to this faith.
Before we consider how sovereign types must go about evading taxes, we must again recognize
that the state has nothing more than petty rhetoric, inept intellectuals, worthless statistics,
fabricated history and pandering drones as a veil to cover up its naked aggression.
The feebleness of the state's foundation owes to the fact that it is composed of people's
misrecognition of what the state actually does. Hence, if the state subjects were ever
made aware of the blatantly obvious facts about the exploitative nature of the state,
it would crumble with utmost rapidity. These sovereign types have a dual opportunity. They
can infect the social order with an alternative vision that, if done correctly, will hopefully
inspire weaker types to loosen their symbolic shackles and possibly throw them off. And in
In doing so, these sovereign types can succeed in proceeding to a higher spiritual existence.
As Nietzsche argues, a powerful individual must listen to his soul and build and cross
a bridge to his higher self.
The crossing of the bridge represents the attainment of freedom through the overcoming
of his self, others, and the customs that maintain a community.
In this case, a political community.
Nietzsche would describe this moment as the most alive unleashing of one's will to power,
which for him represents the greatest feeling of happiness.
Of course, the individuals who pursue this path face grave risk for which they must take
account and develop strategies that lessen their severity.
However, they must not allow such dangers to distract them from focusing on bringing
about their ultimate goal, because the overcoming of self and neighbors is best achieved when
independent-minded individuals have to approach existence with a certain boldness and willingness
What drives such a man to evade taxes in this noble and courageous fashion is his great
love for himself, his fellow man, and what he finds monumental in all ages.
In my paper, I have offered some concrete ideas as to the forms such tax evasions could
to take, including engaging in black market activities and the like, or secession in the
form that Hoppe speaks of. And I also discussed the fact that the courageous sort of challenging
of the belief that we have a duty to pay taxes can be done more successfully in a communal
form than just lone individuals. Thank you.