Thursday, June 4, 2015

Libertarianism and Social Structure

I ascribe to libertarianism, which basically means that I don't know what is best for you so I'm going to leave you alone. For a more detailed understanding of libertarianism start here.  I believe that libertarianism is strictly a political system and requires of you nothing else in order to adhere to it. Some would say this makes me a thin libertarian but really it just makes me a libertarian. For more on what plumb-line, standard libertarianism represents you should go here.

That aside, everyone adheres to some social system and maintains some notion of what constitutes proper culture and how it should be transmitted from one generation to another. I would describe myself socially, culturally as a paleo, a traditionalist. For a long while now, I have held to the belief that historical western civilization brought about the highest and most profound improvement in the human condition throughout knowable history. This cannot be rationally dismissed. It does tend to rub against the modern political zeitgeist but often times the more naked the truth the more the darkness screams out against it.  I have always struggled to find a concise way to define this belief, no short way around a long fence line as it may be said. In steps the neoreactionary movement.

I claim no real expertise or extensive knowledge of neoreactionary philosophy. As I can best understand it is not a grandly unified "big tent" philosophy but really a confederated pooling of three sometimes complementary and sometimes conflicting approaches. Basically it proposes that where we all are at is very wrong, we're killing ourselves by killing off the best and brightest, and it must all be burned down and we must go backward in order to start over fresh in the future. Or something close to this, I think. If you want a very short primer on neoreaction then read on here and here.

Generally neoreaction falls into three broad categories: traditionalist, technocapitalist, and ethnonationalist (my terminology). As an anarchocapitalist (austro-anarcho-libertarian), I can firmly plant my feet in the capitalist area and as a paleo/traditionalist I also fall into the traditionalist area. Now I am not attempting to reconcile neoreaction to libertarianism or Austrian Economics and I am certainly not declaring any personal abandonment of anarchocapitalism for neoreaction. I am, however, interested in where my own personal thoughts on social structure and culture overlap with it.

 I can deeply identify at least with the traditionalist and technocapitalist within neoreaction and while I maintain a profound respect and sense of pride in my racial heritage, as an anarchist I resist nationalistic attitudes. Said differently, I believe in an ararchistic world social/cultural communities would evolve based mostly but not necessarily exclusively on genetic familiarity. Hence, my long standing quip that the blood clan is everything.

If politics is important, and it is, then the way in which we transmit the notions of politics also carries great weight. Social structure and culture matter.
  

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