Beyond Known Steps

Well, I told myself I wasn't going to write a response to David Grant's Analyzing Ancapistan at Social Matter because I wanted to move into a different direction.  But, here I am.  Why?  Partly because I believe Mr. Grant when he says he is genuinely interested in "a beautiful dialogue" and, most importantly from all else, I know once social and culture structures are identified and explored--once these are added to the anarchocapitalist framework-- then the flesh is on the bone and I have something quite different.

I wish to very briefly discuss some points of disagreement in Mr. Grant's article--brief because I've seen most of these before and because I wish to move to more fruitful material.

Problems-

Abolish the state, then......, Profit ( profit, profit ).  It's easy to see that Mr. Grant's stay as an anarchocapitalist was brief...either by chronos or kairos.  Almost all new or shallow-tested anrchocapitalist tend to concentrate on profit. This is expected, this is the beginning...not the end. They tend to conflate profit with value. This almost always leads to trouble.  Remember all value is subjective.  Mr. Grant confuses the order a bit--for anarchocapitalists it is: ......, abolish the state or rather self-death of the state ( implosion ), value ( which includes profit ).  Deeply grounded Rothbardians understand that profit comes last, that profit is the least of all. Capitalism is about social cooperation, not greed.  Mr. Grant wishes to simplify the difficulty of removing the state but you cannot do this.  No serious anarchocapitalist would theorize the abolition of the state as a time-short easy task.  To simplify this step, even for the sake of conversation, is to give birth to superficiality and the genesis of unwise results.  Arriving at the abolition of the state involves traveling across vast distances in the human mind not merely enduring the passage of time. So the "......" is the most difficult, the most unknowable.  The application of Mises' praxeology and Hayek's Theory of Spontaneous Order leads anarchocapitalist to the ultimate conclusion: that the getting from here to the there part ( "...." ) is the single most difficult step.  So it is ridiculous to say that by magically removing the state so many of the remaining non-state institutions remain--this is exactly the point. In the absence of the state, no institution has a monopoly on aggressive action.

Mr. Grant then turns to the issue of human interaction by contract and convention, both within the community and outside the community. He uses the term "tacit consent" to indicate that somehow in private law covenant communities there will be individuals that remain in the community without explicit contract.  This is so wrong it's almost humorous,  "Tacit Consent" is simply the social contract theory renamed, Mr. Grant should read up on this as libertarians have long dealt this a death blow.  To the contrary, entering into and remaining within a covenant community would require agreement with a detailed and rigorously defined contract ( with exit clauses ) most probably published publicly for all to verify.  As for conflict between communities over scarce goods, there will always be a tendency to resolve the conflict peacefully for two reasons.  It is almost universally less resource-depleting to resolve conflicts peacefully than to use violence and surrounding, neighboring, and bordering communities will likely be highly vested to mediate the conflict in order to avoid wasting resources and disrupting peaceful commerce.  An added consideration--if two communities are in conflict over a scarce good it is highly probably that all bordering communities have mutual defense and resolution compacts with these communities and will pressure both to resolve the conflict peacefully.  I think Mr. Grant attempts in several places to push forward the notion that in an anarchocapitalistic world there will remain conflict and this somehow weakens our case. Nonsense! Human nature is imperfect so there will always be conflict, it is not the task of anarchocapitalism to remove the original stain from mankind.  Anarchocapitalism need only demonstrate that it can provide better answers in general. As a political and legal theory, I think it does.

Let's turn to Mr. Grant's thesis:
  "My argument, put simply, is that anarcho-capitalists should become neoreactionaries."

Well, using his own standards he fails this entirely. Throughout the article he demonstrates to anarchocapitalists that he has misunderstood and distorted anarchocapitalism and most importantly he uses his resources to critique our position and not persuade us with the benefits of his position.  Both are required and he failed at both.  In order to earnestly persuade your point to another person, in this case I should become a neoreactionary, it is necessary to demonstrate not simply the deficiency of my position but also the benefit of your position.  I have no doubt, from prior conversation, that Mr. Grant is well intended in his effort but good intentions are not enough.  Without a proper understand of the subject matter, good intentions are often destructive.  Mr. Grant seems to be saying throughout simply this: that his understanding of non-state institutions ( cathedral ) is more dangerous to the community than the state.  Yet, he does not offer any compelling reason, based on neoreactionary thought or any other for that matter, for an anarchocapitalist to "become" a neoreactionary--he only offers a distorted, poorly understood, and extremely shallow critique of anarchocapitalism.  This is not enough.

A study of natural law leads us to understand that the state accumulates ever increasing power--this distorts private exchange and also, because of human nature, attracts those who wish to use it for their own purposes. These two things cannot be undone by re-engineering the social structure found within the nation-state model. Human nature ( action ) will always prevail.

It is my suggestion that neoreactionaries who wish to engage anarchocapitalists for whatever purposes do so, but having a clear understanding of anarchocapitalism is essential for a beneficial dialogue.  I think there is hay to be made with some neoreactionaries on matters of social/cultural structure and economics ( while the sun shines ) but it is foolish and unproductive to do this in the dark of night.

Building Beyond Frameworks

After fifteen years of learning libertarian and Austrian economic material, I have happily arrived at the beginning of learning. I have arrived just as the flower blooms, with foundations in the Golden Rule and the non-aggression principle it is now time to explore beyond the frameworks.

Upon starting this blog, my intent was to write copiously about this, that, and the other libertarian theory and idea. No such thing, at least for now.  Simultaneously I began reading alternative right and Neoreactionary( aka Dark Enlightment) material.  While much of the material identified as Neoreactionary is not noteworthy there does exist a significant amount of material that addresses needed unasked questions, discovers insightful connections so I'm absorbing a large amount of this material. As I have previously blogged, I have always been a traditionalist, embraced technological innovation, a capitalist, an Austrian in economics. Now I intend to go much beyond the frameworks of ancapism.

As a mere libertarian( a thinist by a thickists definition )I enjoy a certain freedom in thin libertarianism. I think libertarianism does not itself compel me to embrace a certain world outlook. Libertarianism provides a framework for building a society or more properly a community. If I can see the frameworks much as the external walls, roof, and foundation of a house then I can view
culture as the internals of that house. Truly, the internals make it a home.

Frameworks are done, lets fill the house and make it a home.

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.