Тег: ideology

In support of ideological diversity

What I love about libertarians is the flourishing diversity of their ideas. This is especially true, of course, for those who maintain anonymity and are therefore less constrained in their intellectual explorations. At the same time, I consider the most dangerous of possible trends in the libertarian movement to be the use of such an ancient technology of dominance as “excommunicating” people from the movement.

Libertarians may disagree with one another on the issue of intellectual property, and that’s normal: some quote Kinsella, others Rothbard. They may argue about the acceptability of a minarchist state, drawing arguments on one side from Mises, Rand, and Nozick, and on the other from the same Rothbard or, say, Zolotorev. They may simply be fond of one particular doctrine because it is most interesting to them—for example, Alexander Elesev focused on non-violent child-rearing, Bitarh on the idea of outliving aggressive violence through a multitude of non-trivial ways, Svetov on lustration, and my favorite, Artem Ferier, on contractual slavery. This entire array of ideas is the direct realization of one’s own freedom, without restricting that of others.

The idea of encouraging intellectual diversity is often opposed by the idea of intellectual purism. It has its own obvious appeal, because it is always exclusively pleasant to be in an echo chamber, and knowing that your ideas are in demand and supported is usually very inspiring. One could also quote Lenin and his famous “Before uniting, and in order to unite, we must first decisively and definitely demarcate ourselves.” In other words, you clearly state the theses that constitute the essence of your teaching, give it a specific term, anathematize everyone who tries to call themselves by the same name while having a different set of postulates—and then launch a media campaign promoting precisely this purified product. Resources that were previously spent on searching for ideas and internal discussion are redirected toward missionary work, and the teaching begins to capture the masses.

The obvious problem with such an approach turns out to be fragility. Not only do heresies regularly form within the teaching when someone reinterprets the original set of theses in their own way, but attracting allies who have their own relatively coherent doctrine also becomes problematic. For example, Svetov has a teaching very closely related to what Elesev or Bitarh bring to the masses, but he is unable to attract them to himself except at the cost of their renouncing their own perspective on the issues. And why would they want to do that? Decisive demarcation remains self-sustaining until some teaching begins to occupy a dominant position. Only then can people unite: yesterday’s intellectual rivals join you, first repenting for their blindness and renouncing everything in their early views that deviated from the current canon. This trick worked for Lenin. Today we see similar mechanisms in the advance of the ideology of political correctness. Could the same thing work with libertarianism? Easily. It is just a word, and one can embed however narrow and dogmatic a content into it, having nothing to do with freedom itself.

We have a fork in the road. On one hand, the possibility of growing a rigid but successful teaching that will capture many minds. On the other, the freedom to dwell in a swamp of fruitless intellectual rambling. The preference for the lesser evil suggests itself, and for many, this turns out to be joining the ranks of the “Witnesses of NAP” or something of that sort. Fortunately, this fork is a false dilemma.

Only fans perceive music as whole albums. Usually, someone appreciates a specific song, someone gets attached to a couple of phrases from the chorus, someone remembers a little tune. It is the same with ideologies. Ideas are gathered into teachings for logical consistency, which is important to those who are deeply interested in understanding them. However, indoctrination occurs through the spreading of individual ideas, or even practices based on ideas—not through large-block constructions. Therefore, it is far more important that ideas of freedom take the most diverse forms and presentations, and that they grow into practices with the most varied styles. Some will appreciate cryptocurrency as “free money.” Some will like autonomous energy. Some will prefer coordination structures parallel to the state. Some will promote homeschooling. And some will go into politics, advocating for economic deregulation from elected positions.

Ideas spread unnoticed. Also, ideas can be born independently. You look at a person who doesn’t even know the word “libertarianism”—yet they are internally free and project a highly attractive pattern of action to others. There is no need to immediately examine them for compliance with a given talking-point memo. Just rejoice aloud: oh, one of us!

Our man Justus Walker

Minarchism is a marginal ideology

Bitarch’s Column

While reading Aleksei Shustov’s book “After the State”, I came across an interesting thought:

“Such ‘choices’ [the choice of ECU], obviously, provide a fundamentally different level of freedom and ensure real justice compared to choices in a majority democracy. The latter does not take into account individual differences and forces everyone to live by the rules of the majority. After all, if one person feels great in a system with broad independence and high responsibility, while another prefers social security and is ready for high taxes, then either one or the other will inevitably be oppressed in their self-realization.”

The author of this book cannot be called a libertarian in any way. Perhaps he had not even heard the word when he wrote his book. He arrived at the idea of panarchy purely from an understanding of the destructiveness of the “majority democracy” model, which has now become synonymous with the word “state.” Accordingly, he looks at the world impartially. Unlike many libertarian authors, Shustov takes into account the demands of broad layers of the population, whom some ideological libertarians contemptuously call “lefties.”

Be realistic — such people are the majority even in Switzerland, which is “ideal” for many libertarians. Active attempts to promote minarchist ideas did not yield tangible results even with full freedom of choice and huge funding. Let alone Russia, with its paternalistic mentality and impoverished population.

As can be seen from the quote from the book, a “lefty” will feel oppressed under minarchism and will offer the maximum possible resistance to the ruling party (most likely, simply not allowing the libertarian party to come to power). From the perspective of a conditional “average Joe,” minarchism is a certain form of “liberal fascism” — where liberal values are forcibly imposed on people who wish to live under paternalism (since under minarchism, courts hold a territorial monopoly, and laws are mandatory throughout the state’s territory).

It turns out that in the eyes of voters, minarchists will look exactly as “lefties” look in the eyes of libertarians. As a libertarian, would you vote for a “lefty” proposing to impose ideas of social justice on the whole society? I don’t think so. And will a “lefty,” seeing that you propose to impose the exact opposite on the whole society, vote for you? I don’t think so either. Given that the majority of society supports at least some form of social support, the electoral chances of minarchists tend toward zero. Many of them do not want to acknowledge this fact and begin to hint at the usefulness of applying physical violence against their opponents (“Pinochet’s helicopter tours”), showing that in their methods of struggling for power, they will not be inferior even to their extreme ideological opponents — the Stalinists.

To achieve electoral success, any libertarian party must either become a kind of “people’s party,” attracting people from as wide a spectrum of views as possible, or form a bloc with a left-wing party based on a shared agenda, which is somewhat harder to imagine. Perhaps the LPR should discard the idea of imposing liberal values and change its program from minarchist to panarchist? As history shows, the chances of success for such a program are very high (with it, Abraham Kuyper won the elections in the Netherlands — read the article on pillarization).

minarchists examining their electoral rating