Is the long-term stable coexistence of different political-economic systems in different (or even the same) territories possible, provided that the state monopoly ceases to exist?
For example, a large ancap city neighboring a network of anarcho-eco-communes, and nearby, indigenous rainforest dwellers with their own variation of a stateless arrangement. What are the prerequisites and what are the obstacles to stability in a global sense?
meta-anarchist
Ever since progress (interpreted primarily as scientific and technical, but inevitably affecting social relations as well) became a significant value for a certain critical mass of people, the stability of any political-economic systems has been under constant threat. Liberal regimes of the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries differ from each other so much that their own mothers wouldn’t recognize them.
Therefore, in the long run, no current configuration of communities will, of course, be preserved. More stable societies (like the selva aborigines mentioned in your example) will be eroded by less stable ones. Less stable ones will borrow certain practices from more stable ones. Different societies will have slightly different dynamics in population change—both through natural growth and through co-optation into neighboring societies.
One thing can be said with reasonable confidence: if concepts of property in neighboring communities prove to be compatible, then, at the very least, conflicts between them will be minor and episodic, without any nonsense like wars of extermination. How property is defined within a community is not that important; the main thing is that when interacting with neighbors, the peculiarities of their worldview are taken into account.
For instance, if raids for brides are launched from the forest, if people from the fields visit suburban gas stations to get fuel for free, and if city dwellers place new residential quarters in the fields and turn a piece of the forest into a park—then irritated dialogues with the general message of “what exactly did you have in mind?” are inevitable. After some time, a mutual adjustment is inevitable: raids will become ritualized and turn into a folklore festival for the city dwellers; fuel will be gifted to the communists in exchange for their eco-products; suburban housing will adopt some features of communal living; and the park on the border of the selva will be used for raids once a year, and for peaceful walks and picnics the rest of the time.
As scientific development progresses, humans tend to decrease, rather than increase, their impact on nature. If food can be grown in a test tube in a cupboard, it is much more convenient than growing it in manured fields. If metals are extracted from seawater, it is far more pleasant than digging up mountains in search of ore. If additional space can be packed into a fourth dimension and put in a pocket, then the wild and untouched selva will begin right at the doorstep—there will be no need to clear-cut it.
Thus, there are long-term factors that will promote the outward expansion of the city, and there are factors of the opposite direction. There are factors promoting the expansion of ancap culture as the culture of a wealthier society, and there are factors promoting the expansion of communist and primitive relations (the abundance of goods makes such downshifting attractive to many). There will be no stability for us. Let us weep!
I read a teaser on RLN.Today about the charter city of Prospera on the Honduran island of Roatán. Naturally, all panarchists are following this case with great interest, but for now, excessive enthusiasm seems premature. There was already an attempt to build a charter city in Honduras, but it fizzled out because they failed to agree with the central government on a number of important details. Now they have decided to try again, and they seem to have progressed further than the first time. However, if you look at the immigration guide booklet, it is clear that, in essence, you are not being invited to a special political zone with its own complete charter, but simply to Honduras, according to Honduran immigration rules. It’s not the worst country, more free than Russia—but for now, inside the wrapper of a free city, there is no free city to be seen.
So I would not recommend rushing off to settle on this wonderful island right now—without first getting acquainted with the project initiators to assess how far the negotiations on the political and economic autonomy of the future city have actually progressed, and what the guarantees for its future preservation will be.
However, Prospera has a chance today to truly become a free city very quickly—it just needs to open free immigration for the residents of Hong Kong and give new citizens the opportunity to establish their Hong Kong-style systems in the new location.
A post appeared in the “Life with Others” channel, in which the riots in the USA are examined from the perspective of the concentration of forces. I will briefly summarize its message.
The rioters gathered into a crowd, and they are opposed by individuals, each of whom is defending their own piece of property. As long as the individuals are armed, though not all of them, and the rioters only have improvised tools, a fragile possibility of defense remains; because, firstly, there is no need to loot a specifically protected point when there is an undefended one further down the street, and secondly, no one wants to be the unlucky person who catches a bullet before the crowd tears apart the person who fired it. But if the rioters are also armed, the defenders’ position will become hopeless; therefore, the fact that there is little weaponry in society is more likely to reduce mass violence. It is also pointed out that the attempt at a reciprocal concentration of forces by those defending their property is historically a key factor in the formation of states.
It seems to me that attempting to analyze the situation that has developed in a large state as if that state does not exist is a dubious idea. The riots mainly occur in cities and states covered by the Democratic Party. That is, precisely where the city government and state police are on the side of the rioters. If you stand with a gun guarding your property and they don’t come for you—consider yourself lucky. If you stand guard over your property and you are killed by rioters, they will try not to report it in the news, and mentions will be erased from Facebook, as we see in the example of David Dorn’s murder. But if you happen, for example, to organize a self-defense squad, it will be perceived as the creation of an extremist community of some white supremacists, and it may very well happen that the police, who tried to keep a low profile during the riots themselves, materialize out of nowhere. In this situation, the owners of the looted businesses can only be comforted by the fact that the Democratic Party opposes guns, and therefore rioters are unlikely to be waving firearms—in that case, the picture would cease to be pleasant for the state leadership.
In states led by Republicans, everything is relatively quiet, and if there are cities there covered by the Democratic Party, the National Guard is sent in, and that is sufficient. In general, many have already concluded that the riots in the USA are rather a tool for showdowns between the dominant “roofs” (protection rackets). It just so happens that due to the economic shock caused by the lockdown (which was again stronger in states under the Democratic Party), these showdowns turned out to be particularly vivid this time.
Panarchy theorists suggest that the most peaceful way of resolving this hopeless conflict would be the formation of extraterritorial contractual jurisdictions, where Democrats would have their own government and Republicans their own, and citizens would simply live within the model closer to them. Naturally, in this case, the number of competing governments would quickly increase: currently, diverse forces are forced to unite under one flag for the sake of winning elections, but under panarchy, this factor promoting consolidation would become irrelevant.
Nevertheless, such an option remains highly unlikely. Rather, some California (or, conversely, Texas) will announce secession, and then citizens of both Americas will simply be able to effectively vote with their feet. Times have changed, and in the event of the country splitting, no one will have the drive for a new civil war for the sake of a unity that no one needs anymore.
After reading the headline, you probably can’t immediately tell if it’s a joke. The phrase looks like an oxymoron! A stationary bandit (the state) exercises its power through violent coercion, so how can there even be such a thing as a non-violent state?! In reality, such a form of social organization could very well exist as a transitional stage toward a completely stateless society. To understand the idea, one must separate the state’s tools for physical coercion from everything else (legislation, courts, property registries, infrastructure, roads, medicine, and so on) and remove the former.
How could such a hybrid emerge at all? In short, as a result of society adopting the idea that aggressive physical violence is unacceptable. While non-aggression is a necessary condition for creating a free (libertarian/voluntarist) society, it could very well be achieved by activists who have no connection to libertarianism whatsoever. For example, in the Scandinavian countries, an unambiguous consensus on the ban of violence against children has been reached for half a century, and this was done by non-libertarians. Nothing prevents the launch of a public campaign to promote the universal principle of non-aggression, for example, by motivating it with the threat of strong negative externalities of aggressive violence for society as a whole (this argument has already proven its effectiveness in banning violence against children and even animals, leading to its eradication in most developed countries) or even the self-destruction of humanity. With a fairly high probability, this campaign will be carried out by activists who do not even know the meaning of the word “libertarianism,” although, by doing so, they will open the way to a world where libertarianism can be implemented in practice.
A rough scenario of how events might unfold:
1) A new (or even the same) “Greta Thunberg” actively promotes the idea of the unacceptability and danger of aggressive violence. These ideas gain viral distribution, quickly reaching the masses. Perhaps some of the activists even become “Person of the Year” according to Time magazine.
2) Pressure on officials and security forces increases. Even neighbors begin to tell them, “You’re a new Hitler, get out,” friends stop communicating with them, and they are no longer allowed into bars and clubs. An increasing number of security officers refuse to handle the enforcement of victimless “crimes,” such as speeding, because they fear subsequent shaming. For officials, terrorizing businesses, especially small ones, also begins to mean political death.
3) People who desire firm order and discipline, and who are used to reporting their neighbors to the police, are, of course, outraged. The police no longer throw anyone in the slammer, but instead arrive and gently persuade people to behave decently—this works worse, and it causes moral indignation: why the hell are they pandering to these scoundrels using our taxes, instead of taking decisive measures.
4) Inevitable changes occur at the legislative level—primarily, of course, in parliamentary democracies. Anyone who advocates for maintaining the status quo will simply lose the election, as if they were advocating for the legalization of DDT or leaded gasoline. Responding to the voters’ demand, parliamentarians are forced to invent measures of coercion that do not involve the use of violence. At this stage, deputies likely won’t even consider issues so familiar in libertarian discussions (how to transition to private roads, schools, hospitals, pensions, the legal standing of children, legalization of drugs, etc.).
5) Thus, parliaments begin to pass laws abolishing restrictive measures and punishments such as imprisonment, and banning the use of weapons by the police; at the same time, of course, they make it harder for private individuals to acquire weapons—but the state will not be able to enforce this particular ban effectively, since it has renounced violent coercion itself. Defense funding is reduced, the army stops training in hotspots around the world, and is limited to peaceful exercises.
6) All other functions of the state (except for forceful coercion) continue to operate as before: educational and medical institutions, issuance of documents, courts, traffic regulation, and even the tax service. After all, when many European countries began talking about banning internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, no one suggested getting rid of the habitual “automobile” lifestyle entirely. ICE fuel is much more convenient than a bulky battery, but it becomes a victim of the fight for ecology, even if that fight contains only 10% common sense and 90% hysteria. It is similar with violence—for the state, it is a very convenient tool, but since it is considered unacceptable, an alternative must be found. Nevertheless, the law-abiding majority, who hardly encounter state violence even now, will at first not even notice that something has changed.
7) In international politics, the mechanism of economic sanctions has long been used instead of military coercion. Most likely, this same method will now be applied to citizens instead of direct police violence. This tool, despite its deceptive softness, is quite powerful, especially in a welfare state where all sorts of payments and the acquisition of countless permits for activities depend on the state.
8) People caught in the steamroller of state economic sanctions will be forced to look for ways to survive independently. Informal mutual aid associations will emerge, which will gradually provide their participants—who have de facto exited state jurisdiction—with more or less acceptable living conditions. In fact, these are the contractual jurisdictions we have long studied theoretically.
Thus gradually, thanks to political pressure making the use of violence unacceptable, classic territorial states will turn into panarchies. Only some of the contractual jurisdictions will be libertarian, but converting humanity to libertarianism entirely is a completely redundant task. It is quite enough that the choice of orders under which a person lives occurs voluntarily.
Daniil (question accompanied by a donation of 149.25 rubles)
What is so good about an effective autocracy? An autocrat can very quickly place people who will strictly follow his instructions in all managerial positions, and then very quickly carry out the necessary reforms. Where a team of reformers using democratic methods manages to cope poorly during the first year and then gets bogged down in endless delays, an autocrat’s team simply goes and does everything in a matter of months.
The second argument in favor of autocracy is that a democratic government leaves after a few years, the opposition takes its place, and begins to pleasurably destroy what was newly built. An autocrat sits on the throne longer, and during this time, the reality he has built has time to take root.
So what kind of madman would actually speak out against an effective autocracy?
The biggest difficulty is that far from every autocracy is effective. I can point as an example to a chapter from The Machinery of Freedom about libertarian foreign policy.
The problem with an interventionist foreign policy is that doing it poorly is much worse than not doing it at all. But that which is worthwhile only if done well is done by the very same people who run the state postal service, and with roughly the same chances of success.
Is it possible to estimate in advance whether a candidate for autocrat will be good, and whether his reign will be marked by minarchist reforms? Alas, all of history is full of examples showing that this is difficult to do. Lee Kuan Yew came to power under left-wing slogans and then began to suppress the communists. Deng Xiaoping was one of the leaders of the CPC even under Mao, and generally, nothing foreshadowed the sharp turnaround he would eventually make. Liberal reforms in New Zealand, one of the freest economies in the modern world, were also carried out by a government elected under left-wing slogans. Thus, if a future decisive reformer wishes to come to power democratically, he will most likely broadcast a left-wing agenda until the election, and his real plans will surface only afterward. Those who initially position themselves as right-wing are left only with coming to power through a military coup, which means they will have difficulties implementing reforms at the grassroots level — illegitimate orders are often sabotaged by those executing them.
So what, are autocracies not needed, and should we humble our pride and limp along in the mainstream current of democracy with universal suffrage? No, this is a disgusting form of social organization, which is only capable of delaying important decisions and squandering huge budgets, but is incapable of carrying out sustainable reforms to reduce the state.
The main problem with autocracy is the monopoly on power, and the solution lies, naturally, in launching competitive mechanisms. Under panarchy, where citizenship is determined by signing a contract, autocracy reveals all its strengths: it is a compact, fast management mechanism that does not procrastinate, but acts. But panarchy allows for the mitigation of autocracy’s weaknesses because a very powerful feedback loop operates within it: citizens support only effective autocrats with their wallets.
Exactly the same arguments can be made regarding a scientific approach to politics. Scientific theories must evolve, while implementing them in practice on an exclusive basis freezes the theory. A different matter is the competition of approaches. Evolutionary development mechanisms work there, and instead of simply trusting a great teacher, be he Mises three times over, we get the opportunity to test theories in action and improve them.
Truly I tell you: for every Lee Kuan Yew, there are a hundred Pol Pots!
After the Russian state banned Jehovah’s Witnesses, the niche of street preachers has remained vacant. So, if you feel an urge to borrow five minutes from passersby to convey some bright idea to them, why not make it about panarchy? And what is a preacher without glossy brochures featuring a lion lying with a lamb?
But seriously, for a libertarian, it can be quite useful to have printed handouts on hand at rallies, public lectures, debates, round tables, and other gatherings of social activists. Put on a bright t-shirt, a badge, a scarf, or a cap in any combination; people will notice you in the crowd, approach you, and wonder who you are. If you don’t have time to explain in detail to everyone what you are campaigning for, or if you simply aren’t very silver-tongued, you can always hand a handout to someone who is interested.
I would like to organize a section on my website with various useful templates (I would welcome help from designers, as I don’t know much about it myself) for free download and self-printing. To start things off, I am posting a template for a brochure about panarchy. The text is mine; the design is by Aegis Mirijam.
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…
Nicky Reid is an agoraphobic anarcho-genderqueer gonzo blogger from Central Pennsylvania
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.
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.
I don’t particularly enjoy writing long-reads (which isn’t very smart of me, as they are how I make more money). Therefore, I am always glad when someone creates a detailed text that I mostly agree with, thereby saving me a great deal of effort.
After Hoppe’s lecture in Moscow (I’m waiting for the recording to appear so I can formulate my own opinion on it), a discussion began among the authors of several medium-sized channels and public pages, which seemed quite fruitless to me: arguments over terminology, personal attacks, distortions—what could be more vulgar? But I was wrong. A stupid argument, the course of which I won’t even summarize here, prompted Ved Neuman, the author of my favorite channel Antistate, to put together an excellent programmatic article.
The article clearly explains that ancap is not reduced to Rothbard-Hoppe-Svetov and the construction of a society based on the absolutization of the non-aggression principle, and that economic theory is not reduced to the classical Austrian School of Mises’ time. It provides a professional lead-in to panarchism and explains quite reasonably why this is a promising direction for real work.
I hope that in a couple of weeks, once the online flame war that gave birth to this article loses its relevance, the author will rewrite it, removing the polemical specifics and changing the title while keeping the conceptual content; then it will be truly great. But the article is definitely worth reading already now.
