The rise of the Russian libertarian movement over the last few years has not only led to the word “libertarianism” being frequently mentioned outside the libertarian circle itself, but also to the fact that the exposition of libertarian ideology in Russian, adapted for the Russian-speaking reader, is beginning to consolidate. Mikhail Svetov moved from five-minute videos to hour-long lectures, and is now writing a book. I started with answers to scattered questions, but for six months now I have been working with the Libertarian Band team to prepare a systematic video course presenting my understanding of libertarianism. And just yesterday, Ved Neuman also announced the start of work on a full-fledged panarchic manifesto, but first constructed a guide to panarchism, in which he collected and grouped by topic most of the materials published on this subject by the developers of the panarchism doctrine itself.
I hope you have already read or watched most of the materials provided in the guide — its value lies precisely in the systematization.
Check out the new video on the Libertarian Band channel! As part of the second series of stories about libertarianism, we have reached such an important term as the NAP, or the Non-Aggression Principle. We analyze how it emerged from the doctrine of deterrence, how it evolved, where it is presumed to evolve, and what its limitations are (since there are many in the libertarian community who want to build absolutely everything based on the NAP).
Of course, a full and thorough analysis cannot fit into six minutes, but we tried not to take up your precious attention for too long. We will talk about other aspects of living in society in the following videos. Work on a new video — about the institution of reputation — has already begun.
This summer, another small channel called LibertyUKR appeared on the vastness of YouTube; although foreign, it is Russian-speaking. It is interesting because it consistently posts videos analyzing libertarianism within the framework of panarchism. The presentation of the material still needs a lot of work, but the pace of content creation is somewhat higher than on the one I personally collaborate with.
Recently, a video about copyright and patent law appeared on the channel, the seventh video in the general cycle. Before filming, they sent me its text to polish a little. I tried. As a result, a completely independent work emerged, which I will either post as a separate article sometime or we will make our own video out of it. So, the collaboration with the channel didn’t quite work out, but they will manage on their own.
Everything is clear with the economy — it’s based on blockchain. But what about the ideology? Not in terms of party differences, but how to self-organize? Who produces politics?
Gastello
If there is no state, by what laws will criminals be judged? And who will issue the laws?
Bvl72
From the perspective of the state’s creators, it must be a monopoly on legitimate violence and a monopoly on making final decisions. This is required to perform the two key functions of the state: robbery and arbitrary rule, namely taxation and rule-making. And while in the economic sphere it is generally clear that it is better without robbery than with it, and that any economic benefits the state strives to provide would be provided better and cheaper by a private individual in a free market, many reach a deadlock regarding rule-making: who will ensure that everyone follows a single set of rules?
Fortunately, this problem does not need to be solved. Rules do not have to be uniform; they have to be convenient. The concept of rules is embedded in humans literally at a biological level. Even young children develop rules for playing in a sandbox. The more established a company becomes, the clearer and more developed its rules are. Rules appear in any chat or other club, and people actually appeal to them with even greater seriousness than to state laws, because state laws are for lawyers to study, while people need the rules themselves.
Rules can exist as text or simply as a set of assumptions. Compliance with rules can be monitored by a specially appointed moderator, or simply by everyone. Rules can be immutable, or they can be regularly revised. For breaking the rules, one might be expelled from the collective, hit on the forehead with a candelabra, or have an eleven-meter penalty kick taken against them. But what would definitely not occur to anyone without a state is to collect absolutely all rules into a single code, from football and preferance to the order of taking out the trash and washing dishes in the family.
Nevertheless, for greater efficiency in creating rules, certain general principles are usually laid as the foundation for their composition. For example, if there are different roles in a collective, different standard powers may be provided for them, but within a single function, it is more convenient for its holders to be subject to the same norms, whether it be football or organizing production. When organizing a competition, it is appropriate to ensure equality of conditions for the competitors, whether it be preferance or an auction. It is appropriate to explain existing norms to a newcomer, and until they have mastered them, it is appropriate not to hold them to the full severity of the rules, whether it be an internship in production or mitigated criminal penalties for teenagers. If a judge is appointed to monitor compliance with rules, they must not have an interest in the process they are judging, or they must not have the right to judge themselves.
The question of what happens if different groups have different rules is also contrived. The rules of football and chess do not conflict; each is created for its own game, and if a football player and a chess player go to a bar, they follow the rules of behavior in a bar. If it suddenly turns out that people are in a situation where there are no rules, or everyone is used to following their own, they either try not to bother each other or they develop common norms. For instance, newlyweds quickly set aside what their own parents taught them and form their own norms. For instance, meeting on a mountain path, people look at each other and silently decide who will press against the rock and who will squeeze past them closer to the cliff. For instance, farmers will agree among themselves how long to wait for the owner of an abandoned plot to appear before it is appropriate for a neighbor to claim it, and how to proceed if the previous owner does appear afterward.
But, of course, in a complex and global world, uniform norms can certainly exist for millions of people, or even for the entire population of Earth. For example, popular languages have hundreds of millions of users; very few connector standards for external devices connected to computers have taken hold worldwide, and there is only one markup language for web pages. Global rules can be quite detailed, and their development can be handled by entire consortia involving many companies. Such standards will be followed simply because it is more convenient.
Some sensible norms are also contained in the existing legislations of individual states. Some of them will continue to exist after the state, if using the ready-made ones proves more convenient than developing them from scratch.
Bet you can come up with great rules for the game in this picture in five minutes?
I’ve become a bit obsessed, and I want to resolve this contradiction in my head relatively quickly 😀 What is the difference between a minarchist and a liberal (besides the prohibition of aggressive violence in the case of the former)? After all, not every liberal, for example, is “for” state social support, or views the state itself absolutely positively. In general, I would be glad to hear a coherent answer.
анонимный вопрос
Generally speaking, of course, if you want to get an answer relatively quickly, the most reliable way is to accompany the question with a donation)
Minarchism is the result of the continuous development of classical liberal ideas, so it is difficult to draw a clear line between them that all proponents of liberal discourse would agree upon. I would approach the distinction from the standpoint of which basic values guide the person we are trying to label.
If the focus is primarily on the protection of private property and the social contract, through which a government is created to protect the institution of private property, then we are dealing with a classical liberal. They tend to evaluate the state precisely by the criterion of whether it effectively protects private property or not, and they are willing to pay some minimal, reasonable, and fair taxes (don’t ask!) provided that the work of protecting property is performed conscientiously. Otherwise, if a long series of abuses by the government leads them to assume that it has become a tyranny, they reserve the right to overthrow and reconstitute that government.
However, if a person primarily emphasizes non-aggression and the voluntary nature of forming a complex of government services—where the actions of private individuals may be forcibly regulated, but only on the condition of compensation for inconveniences, and where the government clearly positions itself as a service—then the person is guided not by Locke and the Founding Fathers, but by Robert Nozick, and in that case, they are more likely a minarchist.
Finally, a person may fundamentally deny the state, no matter how minimal it is, but believe that a number of social guarantees are necessary to maintain civil peace, and that reasonable people are quite capable of funding them on a voluntary basis because it is ultimately in their interest. In that case, this is a left-market anarchist; such people exist too.
The Tea Club sent me three books they published: Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom,” Hoppe’s “Democracy: The God That Failed,” and Sharp’s “From Dictatorship to Democracy.” I plan to write reviews for all three, and you can choose which one I should start with.
There are three roads: to democracy, from democracy, and to serfdom. Which one will you take, and which one will you lead your mother down?
Обзор какой книжки вы бы хотели увидеть первым?
Хайек, Дорога к рабству
47%, 58 votes
58 votes47%
58 votes - 47% of all votes
Хоппе, Демократия: низвергнутый бог
41%, 51 vote
51 vote41%
51 vote - 41% of all votes
Шарп, От диктатуры к демократии
12%, 15 votes
15 votes12%
15 votes - 12% of all votes
Total Votes: 124
08.11.2019 - 07.04.2020
Voting is closed
Есть три книжки: к демократии, от демократии и к рабству. Какую обозреть первой?
A criminal case was initiated against Mikhail Svetov over an Instagram post from 2012. Given how keen the interest in him has been from Russian security forces, it is completely obvious that the case was opened when they decided the moment was most appropriate.
I can assume that the moment was deemed appropriate for one simple reason: at the recently held LPR congress, Mikhail Svetov stepped down from the party’s governing bodies. The security forces may have reasonably decided in connection with this that Mikhail had lost public support, and it would be possible to settle scores with him without much of a scandal. They will have to be made to understand that they were seriously mistaken.
The LPR calls for holding solo pickets in support of Mikhail at the building of the Moscow Investigative Committee. This is a good step, but more can be done. Quite recently, Mikhail Svetov visited 30 cities across the western and central parts of Russia with lectures. Thus, literally every attendee of a lecture (or those who wanted to attend but could not fit into the hall due to the zeal of local security forces) now has an excellent reason to also hold a picket at the Investigative Committee building in their own city, with a poster saying, for instance, that they know Svetov personally, consider him a decent person, the case is being fabricated, enough of the embarrassment, stop this farce.
People registered for the lectures via Timepad, leaving their contact details. It would make sense for the lecture organizers to send a mailing to the collected data and suggest expressing support for Mikhail. After all, during the lectures themselves, Mikhail said that he travels to cities not so much so that people would listen to him—they can listen on YouTube. His main goal was for people in the regions to look at each other and realize how they are not alone in their distrust of the state. Well, here is a new excellent reason to gather and look at each other.
Enough people should come out, and then let the worried security forces urgently inform the head of the IC, Bastrykin, that a mistake was made, he shouldn’t have been touched, and it’s better to hush up this scandal before it flares up.
“In order to achieve a perfect market, it would be necessary, first, to create an absolutely symmetrical information space; second, to exclude non-excludable and non-competitive goods from the economic system; third, to eliminate external effects; fourth, to completely remove differentiated products; fifth, to somehow maintain all the above-mentioned (in themselves fantastic) conditions; sixth, to prevent the intentional violation of the established order by others.”
A perfect market is a market in a vacuum, a simplified model for graphs and clear explanations of theories. Therefore, the transition to a “beautiful ancap” is impossible not because of “omnipresent etatism,” but simply because the conditions for its existence in the form you imagine are unattainable”
How should I prove that the market is real? Perhaps you can suggest some articles on this topic?
Igor
This is a classic “straw man” rhetorical device, where it is not the opponent’s actual thesis that is refuted, but one that is convenient to refute. A perfect market (or perfect competition) is a term from neoclassical economic theory, whereas ancap is based primarily on the Austrian school. Something similar to the perfect market model is described by Mises in Human Action, introducing such a theoretical construct as a uniformly functioning economy. In such an economy, all agents possess full information, and all other conditions described by your opponent are met. As a result, such an economy is absolutely predictable, and entrepreneurship is impossible within it. This theoretical construct is introduced for exactly one purpose: to demonstrate the difference between a real economy and a uniformly functioning one, and thereby show what the role of the entrepreneur consists of (which is precisely obtaining profit by utilizing the uncertainty of the future) and the role of the investor (which is to maintain a certain reserve of capital goods in the past for consumption in the future). Similarly, in physics, there is the concept of uniform rectilinear motion; in various schools of dance and martial arts, there are basic stances, basic steps, and so on. To say that an ideal market is a market of perfect competition is like claiming that an ideal dance is a couple moving in basic steps from a basic stance, while the whole essence of dance is precisely improvisation based on that very foundation.
In my view, this substitution is made far too often partly because of the poor choice of the term “perfect market” itself—it contains a manipulation that makes one think of this phenomenon as something desirable, for who doesn’t dream of perfection! Meanwhile, a perfect market is generally indistinguishable from a perfect planned economy, where everything is also calculated and predetermined. Likewise, we could speak of a perfect communism, where absolutely all material objects are in public ownership, and absolutely all actions are performed only with universal consent after comprehensive and full discussion. Indeed, such a theoretical model of perfect communism is used by theorists when they demonstrate the necessity of self-ownership.
Who taught you to dance like that? Where is the correct stance?
A certain anonymous organization with the nondescript name “Cell of Anarchic Action” is distributing the following manifesto across various near-libertarian resources (sorry guys, I corrected the spelling for you, otherwise it was impossible to read):
Revolutionary Ancap, or r-ancap
The ideology behind the active participation of anarchists in the revolutionary struggle against the state and the police.
R-ANCAP proclaims the following ideas:
1) Active NAP. If a person becomes an ancap and is ready to accept the NAP as a non-aggression pact, they must recognize that once they have accepted the NAP as an idea, they must abide by it. However, the state obstructs this, as it is the greatest violator of the NAP; therefore, after acceptance, any violent action directed from the state can be regarded as a manifestation of clear disagreement with the observance of this pact. This means that violent actions can be taken against the state, and its property can be seized and made private, as well as resistance offered to laws, police, officials, etc.
2) Agorism. Revolutionary anarcho-capitalism recognizes agorism as the basis of resistance to the state. Resistance and ignorance of it; a shadow market instead of a legal market, unions of squats forming districts that are their own closed system with an economy and rules in the form of contracts. Also, the creation of one’s own currency or method of exchange.
3) To achieve their goals, it is sometimes necessary to enter into alliances with other anarchists, creating solidarity and tolerance among anarchists, and sometimes full-fledged unions where the economic agenda is currently ignored, focusing only on the political and social—namely, the destruction of the state and opposition to coercion by other people.
4) Active Armament. Our goal is to demonstrate readiness and to arm ourselves actively to justify our capabilities for our own protection and that of other people in any case. This means only one thing: the creation of militias to protect demonstrators and private property that the state encroaches upon.
5) Instead of rights. Utilitarian ethics are also called teleological (from the Ancient Greek “teleos” – goal). Besides immediate pleasure, any utility can serve as the goal of a morally correct choice. The greater the utility, the more correct the action. But in striving for utility for oneself or one’s loved ones, a person may harm others. Therefore, one should act in a way that brings the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people. And moral principles? They should be followed, but where they conflict with practical considerations, their conventionality must be recognized. We can protect our capabilities by guaranteeing them through alliances, contracts, and our own strength, both physical and intellectual.
6) Direct Action. Actions undertaken by individuals or groups to achieve political, economic, or social goals by means that exclude the need for intermediaries. In other words, actions aimed at solving a problem directly by one’s own efforts.
The ideal example of organization is a communitarian confederation, where communes are united into a confederation.
The NAP refers only to attack, and only to violent attack, or one that led to suicide. The latter only in the presence of substantial evidence.
Attitude toward parties. For the complete rejection of political parties, even libertarian ones, considering them traitors and advocating only for associations and political clubs of interest.
Commentary by Ancap-chan
As Mikhail Svetov has repeatedly mentioned in his speeches, if the authorities do not hear those who speak from relatively moderate positions, they are replaced by real radicals. And when these radicals seize the agenda, it will be too late to talk about lustration; defenestrations will come into fashion. In the example of the aforementioned manifesto, we see one of the early examples of the changing rhetoric of protest.
Yes, it could very well turn out that another “New Greatness” stands behind this manifesto, and after some time, the security forces will simply chop off another branch. Or maybe not.
Now, a bit about what is wrong with the ideas presented. I will not argue that the NAP is not a contract, because that is unimportant. I will not say that one cannot offer forceful resistance to any attempts at state aggression. Of course, one can. I will not argue about which way of organizing society is ideal. Of course, everyone has their own; ancap simply implies non-violence when entering associations, and from there, let the market decide. I’d rather talk about utilitarianism.
The logic of human activity suggests that if there is a goal, a means should be selected for it. If the goal is the destruction of the state, the solution suggests itself: create an organization for the destruction of the state. Hence the ideas about revolutionary cells and so on. The problem is that an organization is easy to create, but difficult to dissolve. First, you carry out an Islamic revolution, then you have an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The stronger the regime, the stronger the organization needed to overthrow it must be, the less likely this organization will be to dissolve, and the more likely it will be to terrorize peaceful citizens after its victory.
Therefore, the whole point of tactics for achieving ancap is to weaken the state, not to break it immediately. Minarchists reduce its powers. Panarchists carefully cut the state along the grain so that it begins to bend and satisfy various private requests. Agorists gnaw at the roots, starving the state, and this parasite dies from neglect. But if you start breaking it by force, then instead of the absence of a state, in the best case, you get a failed state. We’ve been there.
In the LiveJournal blog of science fiction writer Alexander Rozov (known primarily for his Meganesian cycle), an interesting post was published regarding the idea of a “vaccination against violence” applied by the Senoi people in Malaysia. Based on other posts in his blog, it is easy to conclude that Rozov sympathizes with the idea of the deterrence doctrine (DD) — manifestations of it are mentioned with enviable regularity.
Why is the Senoi culture of interest to us? This is an extremely primitive ethnic group in technological terms, where blowguns with poisoned arrows are still used as weapons. Nevertheless, the Malays at the end of the 19th century, according to Miklouho-Maclay, were clearly afraid to touch them. The fact is that from early childhood, every Senoi person learns intolerance toward violence. To any initiation of aggression directed at them, they are obliged to apply counter-violence instead of appealing to an external authority. This idea is instilled throughout their entire lives — every morning at breakfast, Senoi families tell each other about their dreams and how they confronted danger, if there was any in them.
Rozov
highlights the main points of Senoi
society:
1. On one hand, the Senoi are clearly not people prone to tolerating violence against themselves (the Malays would not have feared the weapons of these almost primitive characters otherwise, nor would they have described how quickly a person hit by the combat element of Senoi weaponry dies).
2. On the other hand, internal Senoi tribal customs are clearly not aggressive and are not built on violence.
3. Miklouho-Maclay believed that the Senoi were a dying ethnic group (since they were clearly at a lower level of socio-technical development than the surrounding Malays). But now, 150 years after Miklouho-Maclay’s research, the Senoi population is roughly the same as it was then. In other words, it is a quite stable population.
And he
draws the primary conclusion:
“Active opposition to a threat. As it turns out, this trait does not contradict peaceful, non-aggressive customs at all. On the contrary, it is a complementary element. For someone who knows how and is ready to defend themselves, it is easier to be non-aggressive.”
Friendly natives and their deadly weapons
The described example shows that super-modern bee-sized drones or nuclear missiles are not at all mandatory for the successful implementation of the deterrence doctrine. All that is needed is the willingness of as many people as possible in society to apply counter-violence, thereby increasing the costs of initiating aggression. Specifically how they are increased does not matter much. Even light mockery, spitting, a sidelong glance, ignoring, boycotting, shaming, and other actions without any violence at all, but applied by a large number of people, will make the life of any politician unbearable and force them to stop working for a stationary bandit (in terms of the deterrence doctrine: the costs of counter-violence will exceed the benefit of initiating violence, the conditional salary received from the stationary bandit, who, in turn, obtained these funds by coercing citizens to pay taxes).
One can even derive a dependency: the more people in a particular society are intolerant of violence, the less powerful (and, accordingly, technologically complex) weaponry is necessary for the successful deterrence of an aggressor. If in some country only one (!) person is ready to apply counter-violence against an aggressor on the level of the USA, then the only option for deterrence is nuclear weapons with a “dead hand” auto-launch system (which is extremely complex and insanely expensive), but if 90% of the population are ready to apply counter-violence, blowguns will suffice. The war in Somalia (the invasion and subsequent retreat of the US army) demonstrated this perfectly.
The image is clickable. The power units are conventional; the mathematical apparatus for the deterrence doctrine in this direction has not been developed
