In many cases, when discussing the problem of violence, only the use of force by ordinary citizens on their own initiative is taken as an example of this phenomenon. In the same case, if a forceful measure was applied under orders from above and within the framework of state law, it is as if it is not considered violence at all; this measure is already called a form of law enforcement. From such an absurd formulation usually comes the assumption that the problem of violence can be solved simply by pursuing some “correct” state policy. This point of view is actively promoted by supporters of Steven Pinker’s ideas; in the Russian-speaking space, the most active evangelist of these views is Ekaterina Schulmann. But let us look at why this will never work.
Firstly, the very attempt to divide coercive forceful measures into those that can be considered violence and those that cannot encounters a logical contradiction. The difference in when, to whom, and for what reason a coercive forceful measure was applied does not cancel the fact of its application, the involuntary nature of its character, and the intentional physical restriction of a person’s freedom. All of these are constituent factors of such a phenomenon as violence. It cannot be said that the exact same action at one time, for one reason, and toward one person is violence, while at another time, for another reason, and toward another person, it is no longer so. This is merely a subjective assessment of a specific person.
Precisely because of this, all coercive forceful measures entail the same problems and risks, no matter how they are justified. Looking from the point of view of practical results, there is no difference whether violence was applied by a police officer or an ordinary citizen, whether it was applied to a simple passerby or a gangster who has committed many crimes in the past; one can always encounter resistance, especially if the victim of the forceful measure is placed in a hopeless position. And in today’s world with rapidly developing technologies, this threatens the use of very dangerous and destructive means as tools of defense or weapons of revenge, up to weapons of mass destruction, the most accessible of which are viruses. Therefore, from a practical point of view, the use of forceful measures can be justified only in the case of immediate self-defense, since in such a case an act of violence is already being committed and it must be stopped to avoid the subsequent negative externalities. In all other cases, the only optimal strategy of behavior will be the application of methods of influence to the violator that differ from physical violence, such as reputation lowering and ostracism.
Secondly, and this is the most important point—the attempt to get rid of private violence with the help of state violence actually only deters it, but does not eradicate it. A vivid example of this can be the USSR. The intentions regarding private violence among the ideologues of authoritarian communism were very noble; by the method of the “iron fist,” they intended to eradicate interethnic and domestic conflicts. Obviously, parents will not beat a child, and an Azerbaijani will not attack an Armenian, if someone stands over all of them with a club. But no power is eternal. As soon as changes occur within it, all problems come to the surface. The conflict is reborn, and with new strength, given the stressful condition people are in due to years of forceful control over them. We were lucky that after the collapse of the USSR, those same Armenians and Azerbaijanis ended up with only assault rifles and tanks in their hands, rather than nuclear missiles and viruses. However, over time, they, and others as well, may acquire very dangerous means. Then we will face a catastrophic threat endangering the existence of all humanity, due to the problem of violence left unresolved by the “iron fist” method.
Democracy in Russia has not yet been formally destroyed completely. No one can be elected to any legislative body above the municipal level without permission from the current regime, because they will not even let you get onto the ballot. But at the municipal level, independent candidates are still able to get on the ballot. For this very reason, a fairly large number of opposition figures have been elected as municipal deputies over the last few years.
This has had very little impact on the decisions made at the municipal level. Independent deputies are usually in the minority. They are typically not allowed into even remotely important commissions. They are not given the floor at meetings. In practice, they can only achieve something in the districts they were elected from, but the powers of deputies at this lowest level are completely negligible. To top it all off, as a result of every sufficiently large protest action, deputies are collectively sent behind bars, because they either participated in it, called for participation, or could have called for participation.
Today in Moscow, municipal deputies from over fifty regions gathered for the “Municipal Russia” forum to get to know each other, socialize, and discuss possibilities for horizontal interaction. Now, instead of a conference hall, they are carrying out the planned program in police vans and at police stations.
Any attempt to engage in unauthorized political activity in the legal or illegal field today in Russia is interpreted by the regime as a crime against the regime and is punished quite arbitrarily—from preventive detentions without a formal report to killings. For a reason I do not understand, many opposition figures claim that if they had not heroically held back the advance of the Leviathan, things would be even worse now. This assertion is in blatant contradiction with the observed reality, in which the tightening of the regime occurs strictly in response to protest demonstrations. The suppression of grassroots activity is a resource-intensive activity, and those who would prefer to spend resources on palaces rather than batons hire the baton-bearers strictly as needed. In the absence of protest, they would spend roughly the same on palaces, but they would not breed so many security officers and so many laws allowing those officers to commit any kind of robbery.
The best thing we can do in this situation is to leave the country and succeed in a new place. This will not bring down the regime in Russia in any way. A submissive Uzbek will be brought in to take your place—there are eighty million of them, and they have it even worse; that will be enough to fill the vacating positions. But that is not important. If you are behind the wheel, you follow the principle of giving way to the fool. Give these fools the road in politics. If you honk your horn, they will run you over and keep driving. We only have a chance if we are the majority. Therefore, we need to concentrate where that majority is easier to secure. That is exactly why we chose the sparsely populated Montenegro.
From now on, I will regularly report on how the project to create a libertarian outpost in the Balkans is doing. Forgive me, but this seems much more important to me than attempts at political activity in Russia.
After the announcement of the project to gather libertarians in Montenegro to adopt the experience of the Free State Project, an English-language chat was created in addition to the Russian-language one. Among others, Dennis Pratt joined, introducing himself as the Chef de Village of Porkfest—which is likely something like a commandant. We were slightly concerned that some strange friction might arise because we borrowed their name, but on the contrary, the guy was happy for us and shared his article, written over a year ago under the impression of his own move to New Hampshire. We thought it would be interesting to translate it, so I am glad to post the translation on my website. I hope this will allow people to get a rough idea of the direction our project could take.
People who consider Konrad Lorenz’s conclusions regarding the nature of violence and his concerns about the risks it entails to be unfounded often refer to or use arguments from a piece titled “The Lorenzian Theory of Aggression and Peace Research: A Critique“. To avoid any misconceptions about the phenomenon of violence, let us examine what is wrong with this critique.
At the very beginning, an argument is made that Lorenz defines aggression as a combat instinct implemented toward members of one’s own species and is genetically innate, inherited from biological ancestors. However, according to the critics, this definition strips the term aggression of its meaning. In general, when discussing aggression and violence, the question of what we actually mean by “aggression” and “violence” almost always arises. In this context, it is reasonable to reduce these terms specifically to innate tendencies toward intraspecific violence in the form of inflicting physical harm (or the threat of inflicting it), as this is the object of study. Everything else, for example, the fact that aggression is subjectively defined differently by different people (for some, even an impolite greeting would be aggression), we do not take into account.
Based on the critique, such an understanding of aggression does not correlate with activities manifested not directly, but through social institutions developed by humans. Firstly, all institutions that apply coercive measures always work through coercive agents. You might say that if a person becomes a politician, they can sit in an office and issue inhumane orders, thereby committing acts of violence without actually performing any corresponding physical activity. However, these orders are worthless without the coercive agents who execute them directly; therefore, one must look specifically at them and their propensity for violence. Secondly, other social aspects, such as wealth, status, and skills (which were mentioned in the critique), do not provide such an opportunity on their own without methods of directly inflicting physical harm on a person, for example, using the same security forces. We cannot speak of violence where there has been no such direct impact. Of course, a person may attempt to harm another person through indirect influence via a chain of many instances; however, this chain will sooner or later encounter the need to apply a coercive measure. For example, some might say that a monopolist in the market can turn people into slaves using purely economic methods and even drive them to starve to death by unilaterally setting the cost of labor and products. However, to be a monopolist, one must have coercive agents (one’s own, or an agreement with the agents of an existing monopoly, such as the state) ready to destroy all competitors in the market through direct violence, especially those who refuse to make concessions and negotiate peacefully.
After this, Lorenz is criticized for mixing the behavioral models of quite different animal species and humans, arguing that the justification of a common origin of species is insufficient for this. However, it should not be forgotten that the unbreakable basis of the behavioral model of any living creature is always the biological processes occurring in its organism. It would be foolish to believe, for example, that by mere desire, due to some social factors or with the help of some supernatural forces, a highly developed primate, including a human, could ignore the action of hormones and receptors of the nervous system. And biological processes, in turn, are determined by genetics. Of course, one should not forget the gene-environment link—certain genes are activated in a certain environment. But this fact only confirms our correctness, if we consider two factors: humans share a large part of the genome with animals due to the same common origin, and Lorenz observed the same behavioral mechanisms regarding the manifestation of violent behavior in very different animal species. According to the critique, it is wrong to extrapolate observations of animals to humans, even if these observations coincide for a very wide range of species. Of course, I agree that Lorenz’s works may lack observations of specifically human behavior; however, based on the two factors described above (common genetic heritage and the observation of identical behavioral patterns in different species), it can be boldly presumed that his conclusions regarding the nature of violence are very likely true for humans as well. And referring to the social sciences, psychology, etc., which was also mentioned in the critique, makes no sense, as we are considering the biological and genetic component, which is more fundamental—these sciences cannot contradict biology or make changes to it. In the end, if someone still continues to deny these conclusions, it would be better to criticize them with observations of human behavior, corresponding systematization, and comparison with Lorenz’s conclusions, rather than simply pointing to the incorrectness of the fact of extrapolation.
The critique also addresses Lorenz’s instinctive-hydraulic model. It explains the phenomenon of instinctive reactions triggering in the absence of a specific stimulus by the accumulation over time of a certain specific potential, which lowers the threshold necessary to trigger the reaction; this also explains spontaneous acts of aggression. This model is criticized due to the lack of neurophysiological evidence for its correctness. However, firstly, it has not been refuted, and secondly, Lorenz himself acknowledged the limitations of this model and the fact that it possesses a number of flaws; that is, in fact, he did not propose it as an absolutely correct and final solution.
Next, the influence of intraspecific aggression on the survival of species is criticized, especially in the case of humans. Statistics are provided as an example, showing that wars between different groups of people (including modern wars starting from the 19th century) have had a very insignificant effect on the survival of humanity. I will not argue that this conclusion is correct at the moment. However, here, Lorenz’s fears regarding the threat of violence to the survival of humanity should be linked to scientific and technical progress. After all, humans have become the most heavily armed species on the planet; they have already faced nuclear threats more than once, and every day the threats become more serious, as dangerous means become increasingly accessible for acquisition and reproduction by small groups of people and even individual individuals. In fact, the destructive potential of small groups and individual individuals is increasing every day. For example, viruses are a very accessible means of mass destruction, although other things could be devised. It is hard to argue with Lorenz’s fears here!
Another point in the critique caught my attention because it only confirms Lorenz’s theory rather than refuting it. But first, we need to remember something. As we know, Lorenz’s observations show that species with strong innate weaponry do not use it in intraspecific clashes. This primarily concerns hedgehogs, porcupines, venomous snakes, and insects; Lorenz also mentioned wolves, which do not bite their fellows in vulnerable places such as the belly or neck, and ravens, which in fights do not even try to peck out each other’s eyes with their very sharp beaks. The emergence of such mechanisms during evolution is quite logical; otherwise, representatives of these species would simply exterminate each other. As for poorly armed species, this mechanism manifests to a lesser extent, since either their representatives are unable to inflict serious harm on their fellows, or the latter can escape from the attack—meaning violence does not threaten them as much. For example, when Lorenz put two turtle doves—seemingly peaceful birds of the pigeon family—in one cage, the dislike of one bird for the other led to it severely maiming and almost killing the other during Lorenz’s absence. All because there was nowhere to run in this case.
In the case of humans, this mechanism also does not manifest very strongly, as their natural weaponry is quite weak. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that humans have inherited this mechanism to a certain extent; moreover, we can confirm this with observations regarding war, which the critique itself refers to, again, to prove the insignificance of the influence of violence on the survival of humanity. In many armies, more than half of the soldiers who were supposed to shoot simply could not pull the trigger. There is also mention of a refusal by one of the US army brigades to obey orders during the Vietnam War. Cases such as the mass killing in My Lai are a great exception and an abnormality for modern wars. In general, most soldiers considered the Vietnam War meaningless, and throughout its duration, a typical soldier spent only a few hours in combat. Also, a social study conducted by the information and education department of the US Department of Defense shows that during World War II, most soldiers actually tried to pretend they were busy with something rather than actually engaging in military affairs.
Based on this, it can be concluded that humans possess Lorenz’s violence-inhibiting mechanism. Although it is expressed in a weaker form than in heavily armed species, it nonetheless provides the prerequisites for solving the problem of violence, which concerned Lorenz so deeply and, in principle, is a cause for concern for any sane person. And, by the way, in the material we are considering, an attempt to criticize this specific theory is not even undertaken.
Things are quite interesting with this holiday. It began under the slogans of equality. Then, in the Soviet Union, it gradually turned into a day of chivalry and gentlemanship. And now it is once again becoming a date when it is customary to advocate for women’s equality, while knights and gentlemen with batons disperse women’s street protests.
I cannot say that I am greatly troubled by these problems, because I live in the best of worlds—the internet. Here, equality is embedded in the very foundation of existence, and it cannot be otherwise. This leaves its mark on my attitude toward inequality in the physical world. I perceive it with ethnographic curiosity. Like, “Goodness, in offline life, a mother of underage children cannot be subjected to administrative arrest—what an interesting native custom.” True, sometimes they are. Perhaps that is how judges fight for equality. Well, may they have a hiccup.
In our amazing world, people have the means to achieve independence. Those for whom independence is important can usually achieve it. And they can usually get help in doing so. Therefore, the most important thing that can be done to achieve equality, in my opinion, is to show others by your own example that, yes, it was possible. So that they want it too. So that they look for how it is done. So that they keep trying until they succeed.
And this is how my favorite bot congratulated me. Bitcoin, by the way, is an excellent means of achieving independence.
There was a lot of commentary about the Strugatsky brothers, especially on Facebook, so I think I’ll write about one more of their books that I’ve managed to read since my first review. I am talking about the novella “Monday Begins on Saturday,” which is cult status for junior school-age research fellows.
The book uses a simple allegory of magic as a science. This livens up the plot, allows the inclusion of various folkloric elements, and simultaneously gives the authors an opportunity to safely offer mild criticism of the Soviet system of research institutes (NII). And some things in this criticism seemed quite curious and even symptomatic to me.
Who are the negative characters in the book? Almost exclusively those wizards who try to implement the achievements of magic into the national economy. They do it clumsily because they are all untalented cynics with hairy ears, intent on riding and endlessly milking a single topic, and so on. And who are the positive characters? Those who investigate deep fundamental questions, such as the connection between the piercing properties of a gaze and the philological characteristics of the word “concrete,” but categorically refuse to defile themselves by introducing advanced concrete-drilling techniques into production. And this is the whole essence of Soviet science, which does not know the word “startup” and believes that science is a way to satisfy a scientist’s personal curiosity at the expense of the state—a phrase I have heard repeatedly from scientists, though I don’t know who the author was.
As a result, there is nothing surprising about the fact that in the world of “Monday,” magic is completely absent from the daily lives of ordinary people. It is something that sages in ivory tower research institutes engage in. They might practice it a little at home, but ordinary citizens receive nothing from magic except costs, resulting from accidents during tests and the sheer sloppiness of the wizards.
Furthermore, wizards absolutely loathe the press. And why wouldn’t they? The press tries to inform people of at least some benefit that magic brings, and as a result, deals mainly with opportunistic implementers while neglecting the philological characteristics of the word “concrete.” Naturally, such feedback cannot help but offend a true wizard.
What, under ancap, will there be only applied magic? No fundamental magic at all? Of course there will be, and plenty of it. Those wishing to satisfy their personal curiosity will receive grants for satisfying personal curiosity from funds established by admirers of others’ curiosity, or directly. That is more honest. That means less meaningless bureaucracy, which all self-respecting sorcerers dislike so much. And that way, there will be less fussing over ear depilation.
This post was conceived on Saturday and published on Monday, all according to the canon.
The positive hero flew in to steal a valuable device—a constant leitmotif for the Strugatskys, which I already mentioned in my review of Distant Rainbow
Once, depending on my mood, I wrote a short review of three books by the Strugatsky brothers, among which was Predatory Things of the Century. In that book, among other things, there was a description of a certain secret order of patrons who found pleasure in stealing masterpieces from museums and then secretly destroying them in a solemn atmosphere. In the sixties of the last century, the Strugatskys managed to predict modern society quite well. And yesterday, on the MyGap channel, I stumbled upon an almost literal embodiment in our world of that very order of patrons.
A blockchain company burns a painting worth 95 thousand dollars on a live stream. What is the difference from what the Soviet sci-fi writers predicted? The difference, naturally, is that the company bought the painting honestly, and there was no need to burn it in secret; on the contrary, it became a public action. What can you do—while having an amazing intuition for social trends, the Strugatskys happened to be quite out of their depth in economics.
Burning a painting followed by the issuance of a unique token containing its digital copy and denoting ownership of it demonstrates how value arises from rarity. If the token were linked to an undestroyed painting, it could be thrown away, and one could simply settle for factual ownership of the painting without any certificate. It is precisely the fact that the token is left all alone that gives it value; otherwise, it would be an unnecessary tag.
I can easily understand how all of this blows the minds of the adepts of material production, who are convinced that humanity has fallen victim to digital delusions. But there is nothing to be done: the substance of value is not contained within things themselves. Value is in the consciousness. And consciousness is fickle, quickly loses interest in routine, and clings to everything fresh, rare, and unusual. The more sophisticated the consciousness, the harder it is to find such rarity. The more abundant the society, the harder it is to lure consciousness with the ghost of scarcity to suggest that this particular entity is rare and valuable. And so we have lived to see these patrons. What’s next on the Strugatskys’ plan? Sleg?
The main problem for any socio-political movement opposing state power is the threat of repression against its participants. This applies first and foremost to libertarians, as from the authorities’ point of view, we are nothing other than the most “non-systemic” opposition (i.e., those who refuse to adjust their positions according to the state’s directives). The risk of repression severely limits movement participants in conducting effective actions, and this is quite explainable: if one can receive a heavy fine just for distributing leaflets, then engaging in more serious activism is fraught with the risk of “sitting on a bottle.” There are very few passionate libertarians ready to create new ideas and promote them to the masses; therefore, the arrest of even one of them can significantly weaken the entire movement. Understanding the situation, they are forced to severely restrain themselves in their words, avoid participating in actions, and generally live in constant fear.
It is entirely realistic to get rid of this problem — all real-world activity must be outsourced, while remaining 100% online, beyond the reach of the stationary bandit (“the state”). Libertarian activists should ideally not show their faces in the real world at all and perhaps not even disclose their views, but upon opening a virtual machine with a VPN, they should not hesitate in anything, for the FSB is absolutely powerless in the fight against the virtual! You can boldly post any calls on social networks, publish the personal data of convinced etatists, and organize the most radical actions — from distributing leaflets and hanging banners on houses and bridges, to the open harassment of active etatists (for example, writing “A maniac lives here” on an etatist’s front door and posting flyers in their residential area with a photo and information about their tendency toward aggressive violence).
All real-world actions must be carried out by people who are in no way connected to libertarianism. We receive donations from anonymous sponsors in cryptocurrency and pay “Vasya-types” from the darknet in bitcoins—people who normally place drug stashes and paint asphalt and house walls with advertisements for “pharmacies.” They are skilled at hiding from the police and know what to do in case of arrest. That is why they take their money for this risk, which, to be honest, isn’t even that much. Even if one of the executors is caught by the cops, he will only give up an anonymous online contact, where the FSB will be met with a VPN service’s refusal to provide a real IP address (or TOR, if you are a complete paranoid). Thus, the true passionaries, whose arrest could weaken the movement, become absolutely invulnerable to repression, while the arrest of depoliticized executors in the real world does no harm to the movement — in place of one arrested graffiti artist, ten new ones wishing to make some extra money will appear.
Skeptics will probably say now that online anonymity is a myth and the FSB will deanonymize you in a minute. I have already written why this is not the case and will never be: since the very emergence of states, according to the theory of the stationary bandit, every state is in constant confrontation with others. Of course, there are temporary alliances, but in the long run, one state is always a competitor and enemy to another! The authorities of any given state are usually always interested in helping the opposition weaken their competitor; therefore, they will not only refrain from disclosing the personal data of oppositionists but will even help in the development of anonymization tools (for example, the TOR network was created with the support of the US federal government). Do you think it is accidental that the laws of most countries in the world contain clauses prohibiting the disclosure of personal data and the extradition of people accused in their homeland for political reasons?! It is not accidental at all, and this must be utilized; as Mikhail Svetov says — maneuver between different states to carve out your own freedom. Given the current geopolitical layout, by living in Russia and using a VPN in Switzerland, the USA, Great Britain, Sweden, and Norway, you are completely safe. Provided, of course, that you do not personally carry out any actions in the real world.
How useful do you think it would be to translate this into Russian?
L29Ah
In some places, there is quite a large amount of text, so subtitles alone are unlikely to suffice; the images will have to be redrawn. But the videos are truly pleasant, and it would be great if someone took them on. I’m posting the first two as they are, but the third one, about Keynesianism, was previously provided with Russian subtitles by one of my regular readers and donors, Viktor Parkhomets.
A manifesto was published on the panarchy.ru website about the launch of a project to resettle European libertarians in Montenegro — an analogue of the American Free State Project. Much to my own surprise, I agreed to join this project at an early stage. If nothing falls through due to some new COVID restrictions, I plan to head to the country in April and begin settling in.
When I talk about an early stage, I mean literally the very beginning, because so far, only one family has actually moved to the country as part of the project; the other potential participants are currently discussing prospects in a Telegram chat that branched off from the main panarchists’ chat and was originally dedicated to systeding.
Thus, my channel, which has been predominantly theoretical until now, will take on the characteristics of a travel blog in some time. Of course, I am far from the idea that once I arrive, the entire country will suddenly take giant leaps toward libertarianism. Rather, I will need to learn how to survive in a new place, since the cost of living there is higher than in my current backwater. But if it becomes slightly easier for those who move after me because of my experience, it will mean that my effort was not in vain.
