The right to secede and to privatise

Post-modern theory recognises diversity and even encompasses chaos. In Robert Nelson's words, 'As Christianity earlier had to come to terms with a seeming permanent pluralism within institutional religion, modern secular thought is today being compelled - and not without great stresses and strains - to consider the prospect of a long-term social and economic pluralism.'

Nelson's own prophecy is that an idea familiar to libertarians through writers as dissimilar as Misses and Jane Jacobs will become the next major revolutionary social development: the right of 'free secession'. He sees this proposal - ensuring that any geographical area may secede from its larger, over-arching political jurisdiction - as allowing for a new, culturally diverse world to cope with a plurality of philosophies, economic theologies and lifestyles.

Nelson cannot be faulted for irrelevance: devolution of political jurisdictions is a hot topic in the former USSR, the former Czechoslovakia, the former Yugoslavia, South Africa, Ethiopia and even Canada.

Adapted extracts continuing this theme are from an article entitled 'Secession as a First Amendment Right' by Robert Nelson himself in Liberty (March '94).

With so many secular faiths collapsing, the post-capitalist future will be shaped by new religious forces such as the environmental movement, which explicitly advocates spiritual renewal.

And in an age of powerful secular faiths, freedom of religion will have to include the right to secede from the state.

For secular religions, the right of free secession becomes the equivalent of the older right to withdraw from the established church to form a new one.

While the right to secession allows for the peaceful formation of relatively small, religiously homogeneous states, it does not require their universal establishment. Confederal and multi-faith states, in which the right of secession is universally agreed upon, might very well flourish.

The right to secede and the right to privatise, both corollaries of the right to religious freedom and the separation of church and state, might lead to governments that look more like private organisations. The world's rich nations may find they have to make cash payment to the poorer governments in order to create an incentive to maintain biological diversity; preservation of a poor nation's forests could come to look much like a private profit-making activity.

Private organisations, on the other hand, may come to look more like governments. Community associations are already assuming roles historically fulfilled by local governments. Secession might some day come to be recognised as a special form of privatisation that occurs on a geographic basis, while other privatisations could associate along non-geographic lines to create federations within large national agglomerations, joined together on a non-religious basis. Indeed, it is even possible that the 'governments' of the future might consist of non-contiguous territories, or even be extra-territorial.

To be sure, there have been churches that engaged in practices that would today be unacceptable. Some of these new secular religions might seek to deny emigration rights. Others might preach the conquest of their neighbours. Some might practise ritual human sacrifice. Such activities should still be prohibited (although prior consent might in some cases be a mitigating factor). A world of free secession requires a human community willing to defend a set of core values - including the right of secession itself. How far these core values would go, how we might come to an agreement on them, and what appropriate enforcement mechanisms might be, are important topics for further debate.