The right to secession
Molinari was probably shaken by these critiques and implicitly gave up the idea of competitive firms supplying services of security. He admitted the specificity of public services: “they benefit, by nature, the totality of inhabitants...
[H]ence the obligation, for the individual, either to leave the territory or to contribute proportionally to the costs of these services. It is a natural servitude” (1887: 262). However, in the present system an individual is obliged to pay for all the services supplied by the public authority. It is an abuse because this individual, while not being able to refuse collective services - security, public lighting, sewage system - is susceptible not to want to use individual services - schools, churches, theatres - financed by the authority. Those who do not use them do not have to pay for them. How to put an end to this “political servitude”? By means of the right to secession, Molinari maintains.In between the consumer and the government, there are at least two intermediaries: the province and the municipality. If citizens in a municipality find that they are obliged to pay for services they do not want, they should be allowed to use their right to secession in two ways. If the municipality is extended, those who live in a rich area could secede and form a new municipality or merge with another one. If it is small, the only possibility for them is to leave for another place. The municipality itself receives form the province, and the province from the state, services of domestic or external security, and of means of communication. In the present organization, municipalities are helpless in case the province asks a high price for its services or if these services are of poor quality. In Molinari’s scheme, it will be possible for it to secede and ask its inclusion in another province. In the same way, a province could leave a state to become independent or join another state.
Molinari maintains that the right to secession creates competition between provinces and states and an incentive to provide better services at a lower price. Individual services and taxes would disappear. Collective services themselves would not be produced by local authorities: it would be less expensive to buy them from private competitive firms. Finally, because any province could secede, the wars of conquest would be purposeless and would disappearFor Molinari, it is possible to go further. Citizens accept the financing of military expenses to protect themselves from the risk of foreign aggression.
Suppose that, for nations, a collective assurance replaces an isolated assurance, as it happened for individuals. The situation immediately changes and the unlimited risk of wars disappears. With it also disappears the necessity to give the government in charge of the security of the nation the unlimited right to requisition the life, the property and the liberty of individuals. (Molinari 1899: 70-71)
It would then be enough to maintain a military force sufficient to enforce the decisions of the international justice. Molinari opined optimistically that the use of force could soon stop being applied.
As Hart states (Hart 1981, II: 426) the origin of the evolution of Molinari’s thought is the distinction he makes between individual and collective services. It is true that, in 1849, he admitted the existence of collective services but he maintained that they should be submitted to the law of competition - a point of view that he abandoned subsequently, accepting Charles Coquelin’s objection that these services are natural monopolies. Some industries are not open to competition and, consequently, must be managed by the state or some territorial authority.
Alain Beraud
See also:
Frederic Bastiat (I); Barthelemy-Charles Dunoyer de Segonzac (I); French classical political economy (II); Jean-Baptiste Say (I).