Автор: Анкап-тян

A Panarchist Solution to the Problem of the Global Divide

Author: Nicky Reid
Translation: Aegis Mirijam
Editing: Ancap-tyan
Original text: The Panarchist Solution to a World Divided

In these days of epic collapse, as the established order rapidly disintegrates before our very eyes, humanity seems to be tearing itself apart, gravitating more and more toward the far right or the far left. And why the hell not? Poor people across the world are tired of the lying promises and blatant lies of the so-called moderates. The only thing the warring extreme camps seem to agree on is that the mass democracy of neoliberal globalism is a grand scam. A fraudulent gambling game where only the house wins. But now, the house itself is on fire.

Thus, we are witnessing a spectacle of populism from both the left and the right. A record number of young people are adopting the once-tainted label of socialism, but at the same time, various forms of caveman xenophobia, which once whispered only in backwater church parishes, are now becoming mainstream, brandished openly like Hermann Göring with his revolver. This is the time we live in now, but it has happened before. Whenever empires crumble, the well-oiled markets of state capitalism are put in danger. The people who stand to gain the most from the cataclysm find themselves in opposite corners of the ring. Stalinists and Nazis. Antifa and alt-rights. It is in these moments that the voice of Samuel L. Jackson, the prophetic DJ from Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” a classic analysis of urban unrest, rings in my ears. “Can we live together?! Can we live together?!!” I have spent my entire life searching for the answer to this existential question. I feel I am getting closer to it.

I always found myself in the far left corner, even when the proletariat was still drunk on illusions of progress that came with the first black president and the commodity fetishism of the Apple Store. As a child, I discovered Marx, and shortly after, Chomsky. The lion’s share of my youth was spent flirting with the carousel of libertarian socialist ideologies: Chomsky’s syndicalism, Rosa Luxemburg’s council communism, the zapatismo of Subcomandante Marcos. All of this to the hard soundtrack of Billy Bragg, Joe Strummer, and Zack de la Rocha.

In late youth, I fell under the influence of more statist forms of leftism, triggered by the unexpected revival of Bolivarianism in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela and Evo Morales’s Bolivia. Eventually, I fell into the arms of Third World communism as a bastion of democratic social experiments against attacks from North America. I came to the conclusion that Fidel Castro’s harsh non-democratic measures to protect the Cuban Revolution after Kennedy’s terrorist campaign against it were the only solution to the problem of imperialism. But my taste for history would not allow me to hold onto this illusion for long. After further research, I concluded that the state itself is a cancerous tumor, and it doesn’t matter how benevolent its leaders are. It has always been a malevolent device designed to oppress others and eventually devour itself. I returned to anarchism, but contradictions continued to haunt me.

The biggest problem with almost every school of leftism is its almost messianic assumption that humanity can be united in internationalist harmony under the banner of a single path. No matter how strongly I believed that my own post-Marxist syndicalism was the ideal model for a truly democratic society, it was hard to convince myself that humanity would ever reach a special collective consciousness and merge into a single union. Honestly, as an anti-imperialist, I always felt awkward about these kinds of notions of internationalism.

The assumption that some 19th-century factory workers in industrial Western Europe had all the recipes for my friendly primitivist neighbors from the Amish community, let alone the tribes of Borneo or the Kalahari, simply reeks of colonialism. When the world is so beautiful in its complexity, how can there be only one path? It felt like the same trap that led our Founding Fathers to pave the way for the neoliberal hell of global capitalism, only our trap was tied to the Manifesto of Equality. I believed strongly in the ideals of Murray Bookchin and Rudolf Rocker, but because of these contradictions, I could view even my own anarchism as nothing more than a distant, unattainable dream. Until I discovered the philosophy of panarchy.

One of the biggest misconceptions about anarchism is that it is defined by the absence of government. Such a notion is clearly absurd. Governments have always existed, exist now, and will continue to exist. Government is any assembly of people who come together to make collective decisions. Technically, three stoned roommates discussing pizza toppings are a government. Anarchy is defined by the absence of the State—a permanent government run by a class of professional politicians, whether they be corporate board members, congressmen, or monarchs. The very existence of this managerial class turns a simple government into a State. Anarchy in all its forms seeks to destroy this hierarchy and replace it with a fully civilian government. Panarchy, then, is the recognition that in our world, in this diverse cultural landscape known as humanity, there is no single answer to a disaster like the State. Anarchy can only exist beyond manifestos and punk-rock venues when it is free to take any form, with any adjectives attached to the word “anarchy,” as long as it happens voluntarily and without coercion.

Globalism has brought nothing but colossal superpowers. The tyranny of large sizes: big government, big business, big people, big religion. This problem cannot be solved by seizing these systems and rebranding them in the key of internationalism. The only correct antidote to this tyranny of the masses is localism, and that is exactly what panarchy is: the idea that government should be based only on the same foundations as any other relationship—through voluntary contracts with the possibility of termination, with voluntarism and non-aggression toward all others as the core ideas. These could be mutual aid societies, autonomous communes, democratic syndicates, tribal structures, a patchwork quilt of endless utopian experiments peacefully competing for the right to patronize their citizens—while preserving the right of individuals to opt out of these services and the right of new collectives to enter the competition at any time. Ideally, these governments would exist as social clubs providing certain benefits, completely untethered from geography. This makes the existence of six stateless nations on one landing entirely possible.

What’s the catch, you ask? There is always a catch. The catch is that the freedom of society exists on the same principles as freedom of speech. Panarchy protects not only the societies you like, but also those you hate. According to the main contract of the Confederation Constitution, people will be free to build societies based on any ideology, as long as they remain peaceful and voluntary. This means societies based on mutualism, syndicalism, capitalism, and communism. But it also more than likely means peaceful nations governed by ideologies such as religious fundamentalism, geographic unity, and even racial separatism. Allowing such societies to exist does not mean accepting them any more than freedom of speech means accepting hate speech. We will have to accept the reality that true freedom means respecting the decisions of others, however mistaken, to live voluntarily as they see fit, provided they do so peacefully—much like my Amish neighbors with their kinship society, who peacefully coexist with sinful English trans people like me.

This philosophy anathematizes the current culture of both the far left and the far right, whose essence seems to be reduced to loud protest against the very existence of everyone else. But I view the catch described above as the solution to the problem of the proletariat, which will always be torn apart by the cultural agenda. When right-wing fascists lack the elegant shield of the persecuted victim, they tend to lose their appeal to the masses. Every time one of these little shits gets beaten up by Antifa, their book sales skyrocket to fucking heaven. I believe in the Kropotkin theory that free mutual aid will evolutionarily lead the left to a society of equality. Under conditions of peaceful competition, more aggressive cultures based on fear will shrink, while those open to cooperation will thrive. The beauty is that the ultrarights are free to believe the same thing about my tribe of queer syndicalists. They get the chance to prove me wrong, just as I do to them, but we will all be too small to spend our energy on fighting. For micro-nations, any prolonged war means mutually assured destruction. Coexistence becomes the only sustainable way of existence.

And I believe that this is exactly how we can live together: communists and nationalists, melting-pot ideologues and isolationists—together we can live. Behind every apocalypse hides an opportunity for a utopia. The panarchist asks: why not a thousand? Indeed, why not? After all, now is the perfect time…

На изображении может находиться: 1 человек, улыбается, часть тела крупным планом
Nicky Reid is an agoraphobic anarcho-genderqueer gonzo blogger from Central Pennsylvania

When is the tragedy of the commons a good thing?

In the script for the video about the free-rider problem and the tragedy of the commons, I emphasized how bad this is for users of a shared resource and what strategies have been developed to combat it. Now, I want to talk about a case where the tragedy of the commons is actually a good thing, and fighting it is bad.

The entire focus is on what exactly constitutes the shared resource. Imagine a rare resource such as consumer demand. Everyone has the opportunity to produce a certain good or service, sell it, and make a profit. While the market is empty, a few producers will make superprofits, and the thirst for gain will attract many other suppliers to this patch. Competition for the consumer’s attention quickly leads to a decrease in margins. To maintain profit, volumes must be increased, and this finally exhausts the shared resource. The consumer receives an enormous abundance of cheap goods, which they are ready to push in the greatest possible quantity, as long as the consumer is willing to buy. Here is a “buy one get one free” promotion, here is an installment plan, here is a sale, here is unlimited access for a fixed subscription—just buy it.

Admit it, if you put yourself in the consumer’s shoes, this phenomenon cannot help but be pleasing. But the producer, for whom this is a terrible tragedy of the commons, tries to fight it. As we know from the video, two strategies are possible here: privatization and cooperation.

Privatization means the appropriation of consumer demand in a certain industry by a specific producer—in other words, the creation of a monopoly. Other suppliers are forbidden from selling certain goods and services to consumers. That’s it; now there is no need to chase sales volumes, and superprofits can be earned with fairly modest investments in production. However, part of the profit will have to be invested in protection against competitors, and they are not idling, so these costs will tend to increase.

Cooperation means that anyone can satisfy consumer demand, but a number of restrictions are imposed upon it. This is usually expressed in strict industry standards that effectively secure the dominant position of those players who are ready to invest significant capital into production, while outsiders are filtered out. However, a lot of attention must be paid to controlling that producers do not cheat. In this regard, a recent case comes to mind with some European auto concern that faked data on the exhaust emissions of its engines to save money on complying with environmental standards. But the classic example is, of course, medieval guilds. The quality of their goods was high, production volume was low, and profits were magnificent. Only the black market eventually undermined their dominant position, and a tragedy of the commons occurred, which we know as the Industrial Revolution.

So, when you are told about the harm of competition and the benefits of cooperation, as well as the inevitability of natural monopolies, it is important to understand: these people are quite sincere and not fools at all. It’s just that you are a resource to them.

A Christmas market is a tragedy of the commons in all its glory: consumers are happy, they are lured in with all their might, and they look more than they buy

The Road to Serfdom. Review

Commissioned by the Tea Club

Many reviews and critiques have been written about Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom,” where the book is placed within its historical context, its position among Hayek’s publications is identified, and a brief analysis of its ideas is provided. As much as I would like to avoid all this academicism, it is impossible, as the entire book is a political pamphlet on the pressing issues of the day, and the only reason the work remains relevant to this day is that ideas do not die—and this applies not only to Hayek’s own ideas, but also to those he fought against.

“The Road to Serfdom” was published in Great Britain in 1944, when the country was finishing its fifth year of war with the National Socialist Reich. Victory over the Reich was simply a matter of time, and one could have calmly begun to reflect on the postwar restructuring of the world, but the author felt it was far more important to draw the public’s attention to the fact that the dragon-slayer was beginning to increasingly resemble the one he was fighting. Hayek saw the victory of the Labour Party in the upcoming general elections as the most terrifying danger for Britain. That is exactly what happened. As a result, Great Britain accumulated an economic lag behind freer countries right up until the Thatcher reforms.

The main idea Hayek fights against in his book is the notion that economic planning brings prosperity. He painstakingly demonstrates that the temptation to slightly regulate from above for the greater benefit of society is the first step toward regulating everything and everyone to the point where it is impossible to breathe: there is no natural optimum on this road, upon reaching which the government would stop on its own and declare that things are now good and nothing more needs to be tweaked. He also shows that regulation is total, and economic freedoms are inseparable from political ones, so people far removed from economics should not look benevolently upon interventionist efforts, thinking that as long as political freedoms are left untouched, economics is a narrow specialized topic and experts know best how to steer it.

Hayek did not claim that everything was hopeless and that, having stepped onto the road to serfdom, humanity would be unable to stop. If he had believed so, he would have had no need to write the book. He did, however, argue that the further one goes down this road, the harder it is to stop, and therefore socialism is best fought at the far approaches. Unfortunately, practice has shown the exact opposite: it is extremely difficult to deny socialists small concessions while society as a whole is liberal, but when everything is already regulated to shreds, both society and the government tire of the constant tightening of the screws. A sufficiently strong demand for deregulation emerges, it is carried out, and people breathe a sigh of relief, but it soon turns out that the leviathan, having retreated in one place, is already pressing in another.

In the article Barrier on the Road to Serfdom: Dead End or Detour?, Bitarch and I mentioned John Meadowcroft’s thesis that it is the hybrid society that proves to be stable, unlike the liberal or totalitarian ones, and we also pointed out that neither increasing transparency nor reducing direct state participation in the economy helps avoid the fact that the overall regulation of society continues to grow slowly.

The book “The Road to Serfdom” is a good example of rhetoric that can and should be used when working with politicians. The fact is that most of the arguments in the book are no longer relevant, unless, of course, you are dealing with hardline Marxists; against more or less modern supporters of state regulation, it makes sense to apply Hayek’s later texts, such as “The Fatal Conceit.”

The free rider problem and the tragedy of the commons – new video

Check out the new video on the Libertarian band channel! This time, our focus is on two interconnected terms: the free-rider problem and the tragedy of the commons.

The free-rider problem is the bane of any community. One step to the right or one step to the left, and you either have the tragedy of the commons with the collapse of any productive cooperation, or the state with its total slavery. In the video, we outline the main approaches to solving the problem.

And at the beginning of next year, the final episode of the second part of the cycle on libertarianism awaits you, in which I will try to reveal the image of our main enemy—the state.

2019, results

The most surprising achievement of the past year for me is that the channel continues to exist at all and is even doing quite well. I still have things to say, and the number of people wishing to read them continues to grow. In 2019, the channel’s audience tripled, and that is only among those who prefer texts. In addition, I started writing scripts for videos, and since July, eight of them have already been released on the Libertarian band channel, and a ninth should appear any minute now.

The format of answering scattered questions from the audience helped a lot with post topics at the start of the project; now, in addition to that, I have begun to devote a lot of time to a consistent presentation of my own vision of libertarian ideology, translations of interesting texts published by foreign authors, cooperation with other libertarians of related directions, and even with left-wing anarchists, which I could not have imagined a year ago.

I am sure that in another year I will again be writing with surprise about the unexpected ways the channel continued to develop, so for now I will refrain from making detailed plans. Well, except that I promise to finish the translation of The Mechanics of Liberty and continue working on the video course on libertarianism. I would like to gradually look for ways to move from theory to practice, but we will see how that goes.

I will be glad for your New Year’s gifts in my bitcoin wallet, greetings in the chat and comments, and simply a good mood expressed in likes under the post.

The social contract is a fiction

or
silence does not mean consent

Bitarch’s Column

The notion that the state is a product of a social contract is an important factor in legitimizing the state; therefore, etatists cling to this theory with all their might, despite the fact that, for instance, the stationary bandit theory explains reality far more accurately. A bandit indeed behaves like a bandit, whereas no one has ever seen a social contract, nor can anyone produce its text.

You may have heard about the laws against sexual violence recently adopted in several European countries, known as “No means no.” Their essence is that sexual abuse (violence) is now considered not only the commission of “lewd acts” amidst active physical resistance by the victim (when she uses all possible strength to fight back), but any resistance where she unambiguously makes it clear that she wants to leave. Among Russian social media users, these laws were received ambiguously and were mainly used as an excuse to once again mock “Gayrope” for having lost all traditional values. Nevertheless, there is common sense in these laws. All criticism should be directed at the states in these countries, which, as always, will distort the essence and apply these laws with bias.

Let’s return to the state. I think a significant portion of people, most likely more than half, would similarly like to say “no” to the state. However, the bureaucrats in power are not fools either; they intuitively understand game theory and do everything possible to ensure that for an individual, any expression of discontent carries the highest possible costs, while the benefit from such a request should be zero! Look, even a request as trivial for the state as building waste processing plants instead of simply dumping trash in landfills remains unanswered. The authorities understand—if you concede such a trifle, in a couple of years they will demand the recognition of the right to create their own sovereign jurisdictions. The cattle must clearly know that they will get nothing, while the costs will be enormous (sleeping in tents near Shies in the freezing cold and constantly being hit on the head with clubs is not exactly like going to a picket line once).

It is exactly the same with the “social contract”—every person understands perfectly well that they alone can do little to change the status quo (depriving the state of its territorial monopoly on governance), but they will get into deep trouble if they start complaining. And so they nod along with the stationary bandit, like a fragile girl with a rapist, even though in their soul they fiercely hate him!

Therefore, I suggest that fans of the “social contract” stop mincing their words and say it straight: “They are raping you, and you aren’t resisting? Then how is that violence; it’s completely voluntary!”

Mechanics of Freedom, chapters 2.11-2.13

I am posting three more chapters The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman.

Is William F. Buckley a Contagious Disease? William Buckley is a conservative who ran a loud but unsuccessful campaign for mayor of New York City in 1965, wrote a book about it, and in it, while discussing the city’s problems, mentioned drug addiction using an epidemic metaphor. Polemicizing against this view, Friedman advocates for legalization from ethical and utilitarian positions.

This Is My Life. In this chapter, Friedman advocates for deregulation in pharmacology and the food industry, pointing out that caution kills far more lives than untested treatments or low-quality products.

Children’s Rights. Here it is shown that it is pointless to prevent the early emancipation of a child, and that in conditions where parental upbringing has proven unacceptable for the child, freedom may prove to be the best educator.

“Movement for Equal Legal Rights” instead of anarcho-capitalism

Bitarch’s Column

Recently, I posted a dilogy about “making porridge from an axe.” The second part, about preparing ancap from left-wing ideas, was based on an article that I now want to offer you. Instead of publishing it in its original form, I rewrote it completely, so the presentation turned out somewhat different. Bitarch was dissatisfied, so now I am publishing the original close to the initial text.

Let’s be honest—promoting anarcho-capitalism (Rothbard’s ancap) in its pure form to a mass audience is practically impossible. In the real world, unlike the “pink pony worlds” of libertarian public pages and chats, ancap, along with minarchism, is considered an extreme right-wing ideology that defends the interests of that very 0.1% who are so strongly hated in Western mass culture, media, and universities. In Russia, this is slightly less noticeable due to the remaining memory of the failures of socialism in the USSR, and also a general hatred of the state, which is still difficult to find in the developed world. Nevertheless, the majority of the population, both in the West and here, holds social-liberal (Alexey Navalny, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron) and left-wing (Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, mainstream politicians in Scandinavia) views.

From my experience promoting libertarianism, I can confidently say that for such people, the conditional “average Joes,” one might as well not try to promote classical libertarianism (ancap and minarchism)—you’ll just waste your time! They only respond to panarchy with an emphasis on socially-oriented ECUs or Svetov’s conservative communities. But it’s not all that bad—if you try, you can repackage ancap into a wrapper that is more attractive to the common person.

If you ask an average American what made the twentieth century remarkable, he will most likely name various civil rights movements and their significant achievements as one of the first points. The last century began with the suffragette movement for equal voting rights for women and men, which achieved success quite easily. Then, in the 1950s-1960s, mass actions took place for equal rights for Americans regardless of skin color (the abolition of segregation – Civil Rights Act, 1964). Almost immediately after success in this area, riots and protests in support of LGBT began (Stonewall riots, 1969), which also proved successful. A bit later, in 1973, after numerous anti-war demonstrations, conscription slavery was abolished.

Similar processes took place in Western Europe, but instead of the abolition of segregation (which never existed there), the youth protested, and they were eventually given rights as well. In the USSR, there were no protests on such a scale due to the totalitarian ideology and the suppression of any dissent, and since all formal rights had already been handed down from above, everything was limited to dissatisfaction with the economic situation and the dissident movement for the observance of human rights.

What united all these protests? The answer is simple—the struggle for equal legal rights (i.e., that very negative “freedom from”)! It was only later that similar movements degenerated into a struggle for positive rights (privileges)—quotas for Black people in universities, alimony for women, bans on hate speech in favor of homosexuals, and so on. Initially, however, all these movements only demanded that the state “not interfere”—not forbid women from voting, Black people from marrying white people or entering public restrooms, not persecute homosexuals for their behavior. And surprisingly—all these movements quickly achieved success when they demanded equal legal rights.

And what does ancap have to do with this, you ask?! The point is that it can be presented in exactly the same way as a movement for equal legal rights. The main argument is that currently some people can do things with impunity that others are not allowed to do. For example, why can some thug with a badge (“tax officer”) take away half of another person’s salary and get away with it, but if I do the same, I’ll go to prison for several years? Or why can men with certain patches beat people on the street with batons and face no consequences, while I’ll be sent to prison even for throwing a plastic cup in their direction? Is that fair?! No, it’s absolutely not fair!

The same injustice can be explained to teenagers who wish to emancipate themselves but cannot do so because the state has completely arbitrarily, on a whim, established the age of consent, the age for obtaining a driver’s “license” (actually—another privilege from bandits), and “legal adulthood” (also arbitrary; a person at 17 cannot enter into contracts, but at 18 they can—isn’t that absurd).

To raise the emotional tone of the target audience, it would be a good idea to appeal to the theory of the stationary bandit, and also to call anyone who considers such inequality fair a maniac and a rapist (because that is how it actually is; we aren’t making anything up).

From all this, it follows that one doesn’t even have to talk about ancap—if people achieve equal legal rights, it will happen on its own!

Translation of Mechanics of Freedom. Chapters 2.8-2.10

I am posting three more chapters of Mechanics of Freedom.

The First Step. It discusses the optimal approach to the decentralization of governance in large cities.

Counterattack. This chapter is dedicated to private arbitration—why it is better than state courts, how it works under current conditions, and how it could work without a state.

How It Could Have Been. A fascinating fantasy about private space and what it could have been like if not for the foolish space race with the USSR.

Merry Christmas to everyone! If I maintain the current pace, I will finish the entire second part of the book by the New Year, leaving only a tiny bit—four more parts.

Containment Doctrine for Omegas

At the beginning of December, someone anonymously sent me a text for editing; I rewrote it beyond recognition, and now it is posted in the public channel Deterrence Doctrine. I didn’t publish it here, but recently in my cozy chat, a long argument broke out due to some vague disputes at a Moscow New Year’s party for decision-makers, and so, I remembered it, which is why I’m posting the text here.

You are being bullied in the workplace—how do you solve the problem? If you don’t intend to run away or kill everyone secretly, then you need to develop a deterrence doctrine—that is, establish a line of behavior that makes the pleasure the group gets from bullying you less than the potential costs of doing so.

The clearest and most powerful measure that avoids open warfare is to gather compromising material on everyone who bullies you, store it in a secure location that allows for quick publication, and then casually let the bullies see samples of the material. From then on, they will hate you exclusively in secret, but will communicate with you in a pointedly neutral manner. In terms of implementation complexity, this is roughly as if you were a state creating a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying each of your potential adversaries.

Making acquaintances with some tough guys from the outside is also a decent measure; however, this will require some communication skills, not just the ability to work with information. In this scenario, they might still huff in your direction, but they will try to keep your irritation below the radar: after all, you are unlikely to incite your support group to step in for you over trivialities. In terms of complexity, this is as if you were a state joining NATO.

The most reliable way is, of course, to bulk up, get experience in sparring, overcome the natural omega-like inability to strike first, and then, in response to another episode of bullying, address the participant who seems like a manageable opponent: something like, “You’re only brave when you’re in a pack, or are you too chicken to go one-on-one?” Essentially, it doesn’t matter who wins the ensuing fight; what matters is that it happens at all, one-on-one, and that you manage to demonstrate a sufficient level of resilience. If you cause significant damage to your opponent, all the better. In terms of complexity, this is as if you were Finland and the Soviet Union was bullying you. Finland, as a reminder, turned out to be the only country that, despite losing to the USSR as a result of World War II, maintained its relative independence, and was actually reckoned with because dealing with this little psycho was more trouble than it was worth.

And finally, if you’re too scared to fight honestly, but the hatred is building and you don’t want to pursue a career as the Joker, then buy some pepper spray, ambush one of the harassers, spray them in the eyes, knock them down, and kick them. Then inform all the others that they can, of course, kill you, but if they don’t and simply continue their bullying, you will get to every single one of them. This is as if you were a country training terrorists, and there were no USA in the world, only the EU.

The general line of thinking is roughly this: you need to demonstrate that you are prepared to exert significant effort and incur significant costs to rid yourself of the bullying, and that you have no intention of simply enduring it and crying into your pillow.

But the best thing is simply to stop being an omega. You won’t be bullied not only if people fear the consequences, but also if you are simply likable and useful to the members of the collective. This is as if you were Japan, exporting anime and Toyota.