Bitarch’s Column

In Western Europe, especially in German-speaking countries, minarchist (classical-liberal) parties have existed for many years. The ideology of the LPR and, in particular, Mikhail Svetov, is very similar to the ideas of the Swiss FDP.Die Liberalen, which is not surprising, as he praises Switzerland in almost every lecture as the country closest to libertarianism.

In reality, he only provides facts taken out of context, omitting the prevalence of ever-increasing regulation and taxes that are not symbolic at all. This is not surprising—the influence of FDP.Die Liberalen on Swiss politics is not that great, and in recent years it has garnered only slightly more than 15% of the votes in parliament. Compared to other countries, in many of which minarchist parties are not represented in parliament at all, this is a decent result. But to build a libertarian society through election victories, this is completely insufficient. A similar picture exists in Germany—the results of the local FDP are even slightly more modest than the Swiss ones, remaining at around 10% for many decades.

Evaluating the prospects of the LPR in Russia, it is worth noting that in our society, the ideas of minarchism are even more marginal than in Europe. This party is unlikely to even enter the State Duma, let alone have any significant influence on state policy. Minarchists in Europe failed to achieve this over decades of active political struggle, and it is completely foolish to hope that it will be different in the RF.

To promote libertarianism, the path of party struggle clearly cannot be the only one. Hoping for a gradual transition to a free society through minarchism is also meaningless. In my opinion, a more realistic approach is to educate people with the ideas of a free society and the model of extraterritorial contractual jurisdictions (ECJ) as a transitional model to a free society with a full NAP.