The value of positive security

The desert island example illustrates some of the features of the concept of positive security. In this section I want to develop these further. I want to show how positive security is valuable because it is intimately related to other values—assurance, liberty and what I term ‘claimability’. Elucidating the relationship between positive

31 We are to assume here that the individuals on the desert island have not promised or contracted to not attack one another. If they had, then they may possess positive security insofar as a promise or contract may be said to be a rule, norm or procedure which exists to protect.

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security and these three values will help us to get clearer on the concept of positive security, and will also help us to appreciate its importance.

Positive security exists, I have argued, when there are norms, rules and procedures in place to protect and provide for individuals in communities. Part of the role of these norms, rules and procedures of positive security is restrictive—to ensure that the standards of negative security are met by preventing individuals (through disincentives) from killing, harming or stealing from one another.³² J.S. Mill gestured at something akin to this function of the rules of positive security (though he does not put it in these terms) when he writes:

All that makes existence valuable to anyone depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people. Some rules of conduct, therefore, must be imposed—by law in the first place, and by opinion on many things (Mill, 1974, pp. 63-64).

I certainly do not want to endorse Mill’s strong claim that all that makes existence valuable depends on restrictions on others, because this seems absurd. Though Mill does capture the restrictive function of the norms, rules and procedures of what I have termed positive security. Mill not unreasonably suggests that these restrictions must take the form of laws, I do not share this view, however, and it is for this reason that I have framed positive security in the terms of ‘rules, norms and procedures’, rather than laws. This is because I believe it is in principle possible to have positive security in an anarchist society where there is no centralised authority which has the monopoly on law-making power.³³

32 Rules, norms or procedures may restrict and guide action in a number of ways. Legal rules, which are one example of the rules of positive security, impose negative legal obligations on individuals to not steal or kill, and positive legal obligations to pay tax, both of which are backed up with the threat of sanction. Other rules and norms disincentivise in other ways, for instance with the threat of social castigation attached to norms of etiquette, or the threat of sanction in sports games.

33 The philosophical anarchist denies that a centralised, coercive system of law is ever permissible, and therefore rejects the permissibility of the state. A number of author’s have defended this anarchist objection to the state in different ways. For an argument on the conflict (and ultimate irreconcilability) between political authority and individual autonomy see Wolff (1998) and for an argument from the ‘communal’

school of anarchism see Miller (1984, pp. 45-59). To be sure, different schools of philosophical anarchism defend different approaches to social disorder—‘individualist’ anarchists hold that punishment and social order are the role of de-centralised protective agencies (Nozick, 1974, pp. 12-17), whereas ‘communal’

anarchists claim that social order can be promoted through communal disapprobation (Taylor, 1982, pp. 65-94) —moral norms backed up with the moral condemnation of the community attached to disobedience.

The crucial point I want to highlight is that all of these measure are compatible with the ‘rules, norms and procedures’ of positive security. It follows that positive security is compatible with an anarchist society and does not in principle require laws.

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As well as being restrictive, the norms and rules of positive security also serve to provide—to ensure individuals receive the goods they require for a decent, dignified life—goods such as welfare, healthcare, insurance, employment benefits (I will consider these examples of positive security institutions below).

What is valuable about positive security in this form of norms, rules and procedures? Here I will point to three values—assurance, liberty and the value of claiming protection. Moreover, I will also explain how these values—particularly the value of assurance—are related to time and the temporal element to positive security.

I will begin with the value of assurance. Recall the example of individuals on a desert island. These individuals possessed sufficient resources to enjoy a moderately decent existence and suffered no immediate threat to their person or material possessions. While enjoying security in the negative sense, I claimed, they did not enjoy security in the positive sense. One of the reasons for this, I argued, is that they did not enjoy any assurance or guarantees as to their safety (both bodily and in terms of material possessions) beyond the immediate future. Positive security provides assurance of safety in the future. It captures the important future—oriented aspect of security—the thought that what we value about security is not just that we are free from harms in the immediate present, but that we have reasonable assurance³⁴ that these harms will not present themselves in the future.

Possessing assurances about our future is valuable because we live our lives based on projections about how our futures will be. To be uncertain about the future is a significant burden, especially if this is uncertainty about our survival—whether we will live, be safe from attack or be safe from debilitating harm to ourselves or our personal possessions. What matters about security is not just that we are immediately safe but that we have assurances of our safety in the more distant future. This is what the individuals on the desert island lacked. And this assurance is one fundamental difference between the values of negative and positive security.³⁵

34 I include the qualification of ‘reasonable’ on assurances to capture the idea that it is near impossible to have a 100% guarantee of security.

35 There is a strong challenge to this view that positive security is required to given assurance. Consider a Garden of Eden case where individuals have access to near infinite resources required to live a good life.

Such a case is a challenge to the need for positive security because it looks like we no longer need the rules, norms or procedures to protect or provide for us or to provide us with assurances. While interesting, I think the challenge fails. First, if we assume the individuals in this case are mortal (as they plausibly must be, if the example is to be interesting) then they would wish for the security of their health and insurance against accidents, and we could still recognise this as a form of procedure of positive security. Second, recall the original story of Adam and Eve—they are cast out of paradise for failing to obey rules. The original story captures the notion that even with near infinite resources, some individuals (for whatever reason) may fail to obey the rules of an authority. This supports the view that positive security (say, in the form of ten commandment-style directives) would be valuable. First, this provide extra assurance, we have clear

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How do the norms, rules and procedures constitutive of positive security provide this assurance? One way is through their restrictive function. The norms, rules and procedures serve in part to deter or disincentivise individuals from harming, killing or stealing from others. In this sense, the existence of norms or rules provides extra assurance to individuals that are potentially subject to harm. In the absence of this norm or rule the individuals on the desert island rely on trust—they trust others not to harm them. But the restrictive function of the norms, rules and procedures of positive security provides extra assurance, on top of this trust, by dictating standards for what happens when individuals disobey directives (i.e. as laws do). Second, rules and norms provide assurance by providing individuals with the goods they require to live a decent, dignified life. State welfare and healthcare systems operate in this way—in the event of losing our jobs or suffering illness, we have assurance that we will not be financially destitute or likely to die. Thirdly, some procedures provide assurance by providing us with insurance or a contingency plan. Insurance policies operate in this way—they guarantee that in the event of financial hardship or personal accident, one’s mortgage will still be paid, or some level of income guaranteed.

The assurance provided by these measures is valuable because our expectations about how the future will turn out and about our own welfare looking forward, forms an important part of our planning and our everyday life. We make plans, form relationships, take on job opportunities, and take on commitments based on a vision of how our lives will be in the future. This expectation is guided by the deeper assumption that we will be safe and secure in our person, our health, wellbeing, and possessions in the future. Possessing confidence about our security in the future is important, and is fostered by the assurances provided to us by the rules, norms and procedures of positive security. Without these assurances, we would find it difficult to plan or to form proper intentions about our future lives. Our lives would be like the individuals in the desert island example, individuals who are content but who possess no certainty about their futures.

The second value of positive security is that of liberty. What I want to argue here is that positive security promotes freedom in certain ways. To see this compare the desert island community with a community that possesses the rules, norms and procedures of positive security (say, a community with an insurance industry or a hospital). Suppose

guidelines on what happens when individuals ignore rules. Second, these guidelines disincentivise rule-breaking. Indeed, I think we can see the directives of a deity in a Garden of Eden as being an example of valuable positive security.

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an individual gets great pleasure from skydiving, and being able to pursue this activity is essential to them living a full and meaningful life. If this individual exists on the desert island, without the norms, rules and procedures to protect and provide for them they would likely be more cautious and risk averse, and for good reason. It would be irrational for this individual to skydive. What if they broke their leg? Could they be certain they could still work or gather food or protect themselves from others? Even a minor accident on the desert island could be fatal in the sense that it could seriously impact on their ability to survive. Whereas in a community with positive security, this individual would have a greater freedom to skydive. They have assurances in the event they are injured that they will receive medical care, unemployment benefits and will be insured against other harms or losses. In this respect at least (and other things being equal), communities with positive security promote freedom better than communities without positive security. Positive security gives individuals guarantees (greater assurances) and thereby gives them the freedom to pursue the things they find meaningful.

A third value of positive security pertains to what I will term ‘claimability’. For something to be claimable in the sense I intend here it must be: i) someone’s responsibility to ensure that a certain state of affairs (X) comes in being and ii) justifiable for an individual to make a claim to redress in the event that X does not occur. Take the example of a legal contract. In the event that a contract is violated, the individual who suffered from the violation is justified in claiming recompense from the one who is responsible for its violation, and the state generally takes on the responsibility to enforce this claim. In this sense contracts are claimable. I want to suggest that the same is true of the norms, rules and procedure constitutive of positive security. In the event that an individual (a) steals from another (b), a is justified in claiming against b by virtue of the norms or rules which prohibits stealing (they may also be justified in claiming against a police force, say, for failing to protect them).³⁶ Or in the event that an institution fails to provide healthcare for an individual (z), z is justified in claiming against this institution by virtue of the norm or rule which requires that individuals receive healthcare. Of course there are a number of further questions about who is responsible for providing redress, what constitutes a justified claim, what amount of redress is required, and so on. My point here is simply that the norms, rules and procedures of positive security can

36 This is most obvious in the case of a law which prohibits stealing, because in this case the victim has a claim against the state, and the thief, to redress. Yet it is also conceivable that the same claims may be made in anarchist communities which are not governed by coercive laws, but other forms of norms or rules.

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in principle be claimable, serving as the basis of a justified claim, and are valuable as such.³⁷

In this section I have sought to further develop the concept of positive security by explaining its relationship with the values of assurance, liberty and claimability. In the following section I want to briefly point to some examples of practices and institutions which evince the property of positive security.