Medieval Iceland: Proof Anarchocapitalism Works

[Russell Kanning]

What are the implications of the policies in Viking Age Iceland and how do we apply them to the modern world? Sure, after so much development in the last 700 years there could be difficulties in the simplicity of Iceland's political system, but with great advances in technology there is also a greater potential for coordination in a more decentralized market system.

.....why do people think that with new development ..... simple things can't work? Justice is simple.

Looks like they had some government .... with the tithes and the problems stemming from that.

I loved the article .... another example to solidify the vision.

[Michael Fisher]

I'm not sure yet, Russell.  I need more sources of information.

This model is definitely one to follow.  It's the best concrete example we've got so far.

[Dreepa]

Except you guys are missing one big point....... it failed.  I mean after X number of years... it is there no more.

[Pat McCotter]

Why did it fail? Don't let that/those happen again.

[Russell Kanning]

They needed to refuse to submit to the leaders when the positions were bought up.

[AlanM]

Why did it fail? Don't let that/those happen again.

Precisely. The American experiment in Freedom is failing also. So, do we say that freedom doesn't work?

[Michael Fisher]

Except you guys are missing one big point....... it failed.? I mean after X number of years... it is there no more.

Yeah, it failed after existing as a free country for 300 years.? That's 220 years longer than the US which has not been free since the Civil War as far as I am concerned.

If that's the best we can hope for, then so be it.? It is in line with my principles, and I do not believe a permanent anarchocapitalist utopia will ever exist.? The world will never be perfect.? Let's do what we can with the historical example we've got.?

[Lloyd Danforth]

This subject reminded me of Rothbards example of a society functioning without a government, Ancient Ireland.
It was in 'For A New Liberty'.  Mine is packed away, but, the entire thing is available for downloading at Mises.org.
The index cites Ancient Ireland Pgs. 64, 231-33 and 240.  I copied what I believe to be 231-233.
                                               ____________________

The most remarkable historical example of a society of libertarian law and courts, however, has been neglected by historians until very recently. And this was also a society where not only the courts and the law were largely libertarian, but where they operated within a purely state-less and libertarian society. This was ancient Ireland?an Ireland which persisted in this libertarian path for roughly a thousand years until its brutal conquest by England in the seventeenth century. And, in contrast to many similarly functioning primitive tribes (such as the Ibos in West Africa, and many European tribes), preconquest Ireland was not in any sense a "primitive" society: it was a highly complex society that was, for centuries, the most advanced, most scholarly, and most civilized in all of Western Europe.

For a thousand years, then, ancient Celtic Ireland had no State or anything like it. As the leading authority on ancient Irish law has writ?ten: "There was no legislature, no bailiffs, no police, no public enforce?ment of justice?. There was no trace of State-administered justice."9

How then was justice secured? The basic political unit of ancient Ireland was the tuath. All "freemen" who owned land, all professionals, and all craftsmen, were entitled to become members of a tuath. Each tuath's members formed an annual assembly which decided all common policies, declared war or peace on other tuatha, and elected or deposed their "kings." An important point is that, in contrast to primitive tribes, no one was stuck or bound to a given tuath, either because of kinship or of geographical location. Individual members were free to, and often did, secede from a tuath and join a competing tuath. Often, two or more tuatha decided to merge into a single, more efficient unit. As Professor Peden states, "the tuath is thus a body of persons voluntarily united for socially beneficial purposes and the sum total of the landed properties of its members constituted its territorial dimension."10 In short, they did not have the modern State with its claim to sovereignty over a given (usually expanding) territorial area, divorced from the landed prop?erty rights of its subjects; on the contrary, tuatha were voluntary associa?tions which only comprised the landed properties of its voluntary mem?bers. Historically, about 80 to 100 tuatha coexisted at any time throughout Ireland.

But what of the elected "king"? Did he constitute a form of State ruler? Chiefly, the king functioned as a religious high priest, presiding over the worship rites of the tuath, which functioned as a voluntary religious, as well as a social and political, organization. As in pagan, pre-Christian, priesthoods, the kingly function was hereditary, this prac?tice carrying over to Christian times. The king was elected by the tuath from within a royal kin-group (the derbfine), which carried the hereditary priestly function. Politically, however, the king had strictly limited functions: he was the military leader of the tuath, and he presided over the tuath assemblies. But he could only conduct war or peace negotiations as agent of the assemblies; and he was in no sense sovereign and had no rights of administering justice over tuath members. He could not legislate, and when he himself was party to a lawsuit, he had to submit his case to an independent judicial arbiter.

Again, how, then, was law developed and justice maintained? In the first place, the law itself was based on a body of ancient and immemorial custom, passed down as oral and then written tradition through a class of professional jurists called the brehons. The brehons were in no sense public, or governmental, officials; they were simply selected by parties to disputes on the basis of their reputations for wisdom, knowledge of the customary law, and the integrity of their decisions. As Professor Peden states:

? the professional jurists were consulted by parties to disputes for advice as to what the law was in particular cases, and these same men often acted as arbitrators between suitors. They remained at all times private persons, not public officials; their functioning depended upon their knowledge of the law and the integrity of their judicial reputations.11

Furthermore, the brehons had no connection whatsoever with the individ?ual tuatha or with their kings. They were completely private, national in scope, and were used by disputants throughout Ireland. Moreover, and this is a vital point, in contrast to the system of private Roman lawyers, the brehon was all there was; there were no other judges, no "public" judges of any kind, in ancient Ireland.

It was the brehons who were schooled in the law, and who added glosses and applications to the law to fit changing conditions. Furthermore, there was no monopoly, in any sense, of the brehon jurists; instead, several competing schools of jurisprudence existed and competed for the custom of the Irish people.

How were the decisions of the brehons enforced? Through an elabo?rate, voluntarily developed system of "insurance," or sureties. Men were linked together by a variety of surety relationships by which they guaran?teed one another for the righting of wrongs, and for the enforcement of justice and the decisions of the brehons. In short, the brehons them?selves were not involved in the enforcement of decisions, which rested again with private individuals linked through sureties. There were vari?ous types of surety. For example, the surety would guarantee with his own property the payment of a debt, and then join the plaintiff in enforcing a debt judgment if the debtor refused to pay. In that case, the debtor would have to pay double damages: one to the original cred?itor, and another as compensation to his surety. And this system applied to all offences, aggressions and assaults as well as commercial contracts; in short, it applied to all cases of what we would call "civil" and "crimi?nal" law. All criminals were considered to be "debtors" who owed restitution and compensation to their victims, who thus became their "creditors." The victim would gather his sureties around him and pro?ceed to apprehend the criminal or to proclaim his suit publicly and demand that the defendant submit to adjudication of their dispute with the brehons. The criminal might then send his own sureties to negotiate a settlement or agree to submit the dispute to the brehons. If he did not do so, he was considered an "outlaw" by the entire community; he could no longer enforce any claim of his own in the courts, and he was treated to the opprobrium of the entire community.12

There were occasional "wars," to be sure, in the thousand years of Celtic Ireland, but they were minor brawls, negligible compared to the devastating wars that racked the rest of Europe. As Professor Peden points out, "without the coercive apparatus of the State which can through taxation and conscription mobilize large amounts of arms and manpower, the Irish were unable to sustain any large scale military force in the field for any length of time. Irish wars? were pitiful brawls and cattle raids by European standards."13

Thus, we have indicated that it is perfectly possible, in theory and historically, to have efficient and courteous police, competent and learned judges, and a body of systematic and socially accepted law?and none of these things being furnished by a coercive government. Government? claiming a compulsory monopoly of protection over a geographical area, and extracting its revenues by force?can be separated from the entire field of protection. Government is no more necessary for providing vital protection service than it is necessary for providing anything else. And we have not stressed a crucial fact about government: that its compulsory monopoly over the weapons of coercion has led it, over the centuries, to infinitely more butcheries and infinitely greater tyranny and oppres?sion than any decentralized, private agencies could possibly have done. If we look at the black record of mass murder, exploitation, and tyranny levied on society by governments over the ages, we need not be loath to abandon the Leviathan State and? try freedom.

[Michael Fisher]

This subject reminded me of Rothbards example of a society functioning without a government, Ancient Ireland.
It was in 'For A New Liberty'.? Mine is packed away, but, the entire thing is available for downloading at Mises.org.
The index cites Ancient Ireland Pgs. 64, 231-33 and 240.? I copied what I believe to be 231-233.

The truth comes out!  There are more examples than I thought.  I originally thought there were NO examples of this type of society, though I believed it would work.

It seems it works quite well.  Medieval Iceland lasted about 300 years and Ancient Ireland lasted about a millenium!   

I think we should draw up a charter outlining the principles, functions, and organization for a new land based on this research.   

If I only had the time!!!

[Michael Fisher]

Anarchocapitalist Charter

Guidelines for the operation of a free society governed by voluntary individual associations.


Can't type anymore.  Must... sleep...   

[Lloyd Danforth]

You could, just, refer people to the existing work on these two cultures.

[Russell Kanning]

What a great story. Sounds like a good system to me. How about we use that one after we bring down this one?

[Michael Fisher]

What a great story. Sounds like a good system to me. How about we use that one after we bring down this one?

How about we create the new one to replace the old one before the old one collapses?   

[BillG]

What a great story. Sounds like a good system to me. How about we use that one after we bring down this one?

How about we create the new one to replace the old one before the old one collapses?   

that is exactly the aim of mutualists...I am suprised no one talks about mutualism - why is that?

http://mutualist.org/

excerpt:
Mutualism, as a variety of anarchism, goes back to P.J. Proudhon in France and Josiah Warren in the U.S.  It favors, to the extent possible, an evolutionary approach to creating a new society.  It emphasizes the importance of peaceful activity in building alternative social institutions within the existing society, and strengthening those institutions until they finally replace the existing statist system.  As Paul Goodman put it, "A free society cannot be the substitution of a 'new order' for the old order; it is the extension of spheres of free action until they make up most of the social life."

[ladyattis]

Oddly, I'm reminded of the Persian Empire with regard to the references to Ancient Iceland and Ireland. Although, the Persians had a clear governmental structure, most of it was based on the acceptance of the people. For example, the Persian army would conquer an area, but after the conquest, any remaining members of the defeated army were offered jobs automatically as part of the new government. Also, this government was not absolutely beholden to the central kingish, since most of the time it was just a matter of cornering trade in certain regions, which was the major drive behind the Persian Empire.

Just think of the Persian Empire as an aggressive company with liberal subsidiary policies. 

-- Bridget