The Fool on the Hill: Defence of the Good Society

Violence, for any purpose, but perhaps especially for imposing the will of one group of people on another, is an evil; an evil that must be anathema to a good society. But the problem of evil exists and will not go away because we will it so. As I write this, the Russian army is rolling very slowly, and at enormous cost, forward across Ukraine, crushing under its weight thousands of people and at least hundreds of thousands of homes. Behind that advance it trails an exceedingly bad — an exceedingly violent and repressive — society.

Ukraine is not a 'good society' in the sense of this essay, but it's not a bad society. On the contrary, it is a society which aspires to be better and before this unprovoked orgy of violence was making progress towards being better. Indeed, it's probably because it was making progress — making its people both freer and more prosperous — and because that relative prosperity and freedom contrasted sharply with the conditions of the people of Russia across the border, that the Russian elite considered it a threat.

The good society would be extremely free. And while, in absolute terms, it would probably produce less material goods than a capitalist society, nevertheless, because it would share those goods it had much more equitably, its people would be adequately prosperous. Thus, by existing, it would provide an exemplar to the people of less good societies that things could be different, and, by that means, it would constitute a threat to the rulers of those less good societies which sought to keep them less free and to concentrate prosperity into their elites.

And, let's be clear about this: passive resistance, civil disobedience, non violent direct action, do not work as a defence against a state which is prepared to use violence on the scale that Russia now is.

In a world which contains states with a state capability for violence, a good society which cannot defend itself probably cannot remain a good society for long — even though it is arguable, and I would argue, that the possession of weapons, which is key to a capacity for communal defence, tends toward, or at least risks, making a society a much less good society.

However, it's possible to point to relatively good societies where widespread possession of firearms and widespread training in their use does not lead either to actual civil violence or to a significant problem of threats of civil violence. Switzerland would be one example; Finland another. Both countries have universal male conscription, and although in Finland there are non-military options; both countries allow but don't require women also to volunteer for military service. Both countries have a military doctrine that emphasises territorial defence; neither has any history of adventurist foreign wars, or, indeed, of any wars of aggression. Both countries have highly regarded domestic small arms industries.

So, first: is it possible at all for a good society to defend itself? Is it possible at all for a good society to equip itself for its own defence? The answer is at least partly 'yes', although whether it is able to equip itself adequately is less certain. Let's consider this slowly.

A good society is certainly capable of industry on a craft scale. But a self organising society is probably less capable of, or at least less efficient at, developing and maintaining industrial processes which require the investment of large amounts of resource by large numbers of people working to a consistent plan over a long period of time. Just negotiating an agreed plan and negotiating the agreements to commit the resources would be more difficult.

It's obvious that it will be easier for a good society to produce things which can be produced by small groups of people who know each other, who have good social cohesion, using the tools and methods that they can themselves create from fairly basic inputs; that the more complex the chain of processes required to produce a finished, useful product, the less well adapted a good society is to produce that product.

There are many things which modern capitalism produces in plants requiring a huge amount of investment which we don't currently know how to produce at a small craft workshop scale. I'd point to electronic components, and especially microchips, as cases in point. It's possible that a good society would be able to develop techniques to make such things at craft scale, but it isn't certain; and, even if it were possible, there are good reasons to doubt whether it would be as efficient as capitalist industrial production.

Modern infantry firearms are by and large not produced on a craft scale. Their manufacture currently makes extensive use of stamped sheet metal parts, which require a huge hinterland of heavy industry in producing consistent high quality steel sheet, and the dies and presses required also seem to me (although I may be wrong) too capital intensive to be easily produced.

However each of the components of a working rifle, or assault rifle, or sub machine gun, or general purpose machine gun can be produced on a craft scale. They can be produced by turning or milling from extrusions or forgings. You still need some group to mine (or process scrap), and some group to smelt metal into ingots or bar stock or extrusions, but each of those processes both is possible, and is needed for many of the tools and other basic products needed by a society anyway. So it's reasonable to expect that they would be done, but probably typically in distributed, small scale works, and it might be reasonable to have concerns about consistency of production.

In a society with no concept of intellectual property, good designs and techniques, and improvements to those designs and techniques, would be widely shared. And the need to be able to use standardised ammunition and standardised replacement parts would surely be well understood.

In short, not only is it possible in a good society to produce infantry small arms, in a society in which people are free to do what they like, it's impossible to prevent someone from devoting their time to making small arms, if that's what they choose. Examples of small arms made by one or two people in a shed are fairly widespread, and, indeed, the current standard British army sniper rifle was originally produced in exactly that way.

Are small arms sufficient? Well, that's another question altogether. A civilian militia equipped and trained with small arms and knowing their own territory well can certainly make invasion extremely costly. But against armour?

The Ukrainians have been making considerable use of heavy anti-materiel weapons of their own design, and these are craft products; but while they're effective against light armoured vehicles, they're not effective against tanks. Against tanks they've been using miniature guided missiles of western design and manufacture, and these make heavy use of advanced electronics for guidance and also to some extent for target acquisition.

Again, Ukraine has made extensive and effective use of drones, including home-produced drones, both for reconnaissance and as anti-armour weapons. But the attrition rate is high; and the Ukrainian drones depend on high efficiency pulse-width modulated electric motors, which in turn depend on rare earth magnets, which are not possible to produce without access to rare earths and are not obviously suited to craft production. Could a good society rely on strategic support from societies of other types? It's hard to believe this could be relied on.

War causes extraordinary suffering and extraordinary dislocation and destruction. A society that is in the process of fighting a war, even a war of defence, isn't providing for its people those things a good society should provide.

Ultimately, it's hard to see how a good society could be defended against assault by capitalist enemies by violence; and that is probably why we do not see good societies in the world today.

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