Alex Rozov, a left-wing anarchist and author of the transutopia cycle, has read my “Libertarian Theory of War” and shared his impressions on his channel. I felt it necessary to add the word “left-wing” to his description so that the reader would better understand where he gets such a strange conception of ancap:
Ancap society is based on the non-aggression principle. Every member of society recognizes the established distribution of property and promises not to seize by force what is recognized as belonging to someone else.
It is quite characteristic for leftists to speak not of the ways of acquiring property, but of the distribution of property; not of methods (exchange), but of results (inequality), and so on. However, it would be a sin for me to be indignant about someone else’s inclination toward such holistic constructs, since I myself operate with the concept of collective speculative subjects, aka spirits, in my book.
I view war for resources within my classification as one of three causes of war, and I separately indicate that for libertarians, this type of war is marginal: although the forceful acquisition of resources may be legitimate (in the case of restitution), it is usually too expensive to make sense. Alex, however, interprets the text as if it were entirely about the seizure of resources, while everything else is apparently insignificant lyrical digressions—some kind of war for freedom, what are you even talking about. I don’t know if the entire pathos of the book completely passed him by, if this part of the reasoning is too banal for him and therefore does not require separate analysis, or if it is simply uncharacteristic for Alex to speak of ethics where it is not verified by economics. To some extent, the epigraph to the book is precisely my polemic with such a purely economic approach to conflicts.
Upon reaching section 2.3.3 (I hope he progressed further afterward), Alex saw a logical dead end: war is expensive, a temptation may arise to forcefully extract resources from uninvolved parties, and that is lawlessness, so that’s the end of your ancap. That is essentially where his analysis of the book ends.
Meanwhile, the text explicitly states that even if such requisitions are accompanied by promises to compensate everything, the person subjected to the requisitions still has the full right to resist this by any means, up to lethal ones. In other words, he may consider this the beginning of a war against him, where he is the defending party, and you can’t argue with him, damn it, because he is right; therefore, try to remain within the framework of voluntary transactions with outsiders even during wartime, and do not make new enemies for yourself. Perhaps I should have articulated this point more clearly. Perhaps Alex was simply looking for something to nitpick. If you think the text should be adjusted, please suggest options.
