Professor J.R.R Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, has been described as an anarcho-monarchist, and he incorporated those political ideals into Middle-earth. Among them was his stance against coercion.
“The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against Kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion.” -J. R. R. Tolkien, “Letter 144”
Tolkien wrote, “The supremely bad motive [is] domination of others’ free wills.” Tolkien’s heroes were the free peoples—those who follow Eru’s design. Eru, the god of Middle-earth, chose not to coerce his creation but allows free will. The Istari, or wizards (angelic beings), were sent to help the free peoples but not to “rule the wills of men and elves.”
The Istari themselves were allowed free will, even to rebel against Eru. The wizard Saruman the White turned against his creator, and Radagast the Brown forsook his purpose even if he was not in outright rebellion. Gandalf alone followed the course; he “sought neither power nor praise.”
Tolkien wrote, “The supremely bad motive [is] domination of others’ free wills.” Tolkien makes a noticeable distinction between those who desire power and the control of others’ wills, and those who oppose that control. The evil tyrants, such as Sauron, seek the power to control the will of others. The power of the Ring is used to force the wielder’s will upon another. The free people reject the use of this type of control and fight to prevent it.
Among the free people, titles are hereditary in order to prevent those who seek power from getting it. Unlike politicians, the leaders of the free peoples do not and should not desire power. When they do, it is portrayed in a negative light.
For example, Éowyn of Rohan was under a shadow as she searched for glory and fame. She could not find happiness until she declared to Faramir, “No longer do I desire to be a queen.” Faramir himself never desired glory or power and willingly gave up his stewardship of Gondor to Aragorn (who refused the surrender and returned the office along with the rule of Ithilien), the rightful and returning king, to go with Éowyn who would “make a garden” in his new realm.
Through decentralization, true diversity thrives across the free peoples’ domains. Dwarves, elves, hobbits, and men are allowed to maintain their own cultures without the need or desire to control any other. Treebeard says to Celeborn, the lord of Lórien, whose lands border Fangorn Forest, “I know mine, and you know yours. Let neither side molest what is the other’s.” Even when various groups live in the same areas, they respect and practice self-governance.
For example, in what is described as an excellent situation in Bree, hobbits, men, dwarves, and elves all pass through or live in Bree in peace. Men are the most numerous and govern Bree, yet the hobbits who also dwell there do so, “minding their own affairs in their own ways.” And Bree itself is entirely autonomous; the men of Bree are described as “independent; they belonged to nobody but themselves.” In and around Laketown, Dale, Erebor, and the Woodland Realm, dwarves, men, and elves (or today, Republicans, Democrats, and libertarians) live in peace, alliance, and friendship.
But this harmonious relationship between these diverse cultures was maintained not by having everyone vote to determine a majority opinion that could be used to control and force conformity but the opposite. All were allowed to live as they wished, and thus there was no cause for strife. There was a live-and-let-live attitude, an attitude of tolerance.
No one was upset or offended because another group chose to live according to their own customs. No one desired to force others to abide by their customs. They were perfectly content to accept the diversity that allowed themselves and others to live happily. The tyranny of mob rule had not infiltrated the free peoples’ realms.
Tolkien’s model of kingship centered on consent and law. Rulers did not lord it over their people, coerce them, or burden them with taxes and regulations. Like under kingship, within the free peoples’ realms, there is no state that enacts legislation to control the people. The lords allow maximum free will and liberty to those living in their realm.
Aragorn, the heir of Elendil, rightful heir to the throne of Gondor, is given as an example of an ideal king who rules his realm and judges his kingdom with wisdom. Further he allows self-rule to certain peoples who are under his authority and protection. The free peoples’ kings and lords led and united their realms. Aragorn said, “Only of your free will would I have you come,” and “Those who follow me do so of their free will.”
The Shire was given full autonomy as well as a gift of land from Aragorn. Faramir was given Ithilien to rule as his princedom. To the Ents, Aragorn gave the valley surrounding Orthanc and more land west of the mountains to allow expansion of their forest. For the aid given to the Rohirrim during their ride to Minas Tirith, the forest of Drúadan was bequeathed to Ghân-buri-Ghân and his people, the wild men. By order of the King, none could enter this realm without their leave. Aragorn did not remove or disempower “less civilized” societies, such as these wild men, or exploit their resources; instead, he gave them self-governance.
Bree was also given autonomy. Butterbur, of the Prancing Pony, grew concerned when he heard there was a new king saying, “So long as he lets Bree alone.” Gandalf assured him, “He will; he knows and loves it.” Rohan kept its sovereignty under King Éomer and Gimli became lord of the Glittering Caves. Others as well, under Aragorn, were given complete autonomy
Aragorn did not seek to expand his empire or take advantage of his defeated enemies. Instead, he took back only the lands that rightly belonged to Gondor. He made peace with his former enemies, the Easterlings and Haradrim, who had been allies of Sauron during the War of the Ring.
Consent of the governed is also practiced in Valinor. Manwë, king of the Valar, “has no thought for his own honor and is not jealous of his power, but rules all to peace.” The Valar allowed the Noldor elves to enter paradise and leave (secession) when they chose to and did not attempt to take the Silmarils by force.
When the Noldor returned to Beleriand from Valinor, they lived under a feudalistic hierarchy system. There was a high king over all, but the elves were organized by kinship with self-governing realms led by local lords. Similarly, the Sindar elf king Thingol was lord of Beleriand and king of Doriath. In war, they fought under their local lords and banners.
The Shire was a libertarian’s Disneyland. We read that it had “hardly any government.” The only police force were volunteer shirriffs (sheriffs) who carried no weapons and wore regular clothes. They did not harass, fine, or imprison hobbits but guarded the borders and returned stray animals. The sheriff, Robin Smallburrow, summed up his duties as “walking around the country and seeing folk and hearing the news and knowing where the good beer was.”
A very tribal and hereditary society, Hobbit families passed down their ancestral lands through the generations, and families governed their own matters. Tolkien tells us that, in the Shire, “Families, for the most part, managed their own affairs” where “many generations of relatives lived in (comparative) peace together in one ancestral and many tunneled mansion. All hobbits were, in any case, clannish.” In The Hobbit, we read that “the Bagginses have lived in the neighborhood of the Hill for time out of mind.”
Extraordinarily decentralized, the Shire was divided into four farthings, east, west, north and south, to which had been added Buckland and later the Westmarch, and then into even smaller folklands, “which still bore the names of some of the old leading families.”
The mayor of the largest town in the Shire, Michel Delving was the only elected position in the Shire. The mayor’s most important duty was to deliver the mail. Hobbiton and Bywater’s post office were so small they needed volunteers to help deliver Bilbo’s birthday party invitations. The post office and the police “were the only Shire-services, and the messengers were the most numerous, and much busier of the two.” In other words, the government was basically the post office.
Liberty did not exist in Mordor. Instead, it was the strength of the all-powerful centralized government of the tyrants that controlled the minions. Peace and self-governance were not to be found in the realms ruled by the tyrannical Sauron and Saruman. They operated using a highly centralized form of government driven by fear, power, and control.
Sauron was the law himself. His dictates, his desires, and what he declared was law. Further, orcs also despised one another, constantly fighting and killing each other. Hatred arose among the various groups because all of them were forced into the same system in order to benefit the most powerful tyrants. Their assumption was that they ought to rule over others (the height of pride) against their own will.
Power was centralized in these rulers who desired all Middle-earth to be under authoritarian control. Industry efficiency, militarization, and slavery were all common forces under the Shadow. Everything was directed to benefit the ruler. The rulers desired control of others and would achieve this by any means, whether military, ring, deception or otherwise.
Renowned Professor J.R.R. Tolkien’s libertarian world is attractive to readers who seek an escape from the coercive governmental systems of the modern world. His portrayal of a libertarian free people versus evil totalitarian and centralized systems paints a clear picture of good versus evil within a political context, revealing to the reader that we are in need of a new direction.
We all—wizards, hobbits, dwarves, and men—deserve to be governed as we wish and not forced to comply with a government against our own will.
