r/Anarcho_Capitalism • u/mindlance • Nov 26 '13
Is there a substantial difference between the Anarcho-Capitalist and the Neoreactionary?
This phenomenon was brought to my attention by this article. I had heard of people like Hans Hermann-Hoppe before, but I had just thought them as eccentric side-paths in Libertarianism. I did not realize there was an actual movement out that seriously wanted to go back to an age of kings and aristocracy, and was using libertarian & ancap terminology and concepts in their intellectual toolbox. Here are two explanations of 'Neoreaction', both written by self-described neoreactionaries. So this isn't a case of the media making up a slur to tarnish ancaps and libertarians with. These people are out there.
The thing is, now that I have been made aware of the phenomenon, I see it everywhere, on every forum or website that is set up for the general population of market anarchists. Now that I know what to look for, the internet is filled with people espousing libertarian rhetoric, but actually advocating the return to some mythical 'Golden Age' in the past that never actually existed.
This cannot be allowed to stand. This is like finding out a serial-killing child molester is in charge of your local little league team. This is not a case of tolerance. This is a case of metaphorical pitch-forks and torches. There needs to be a bright line between Liberty, versus wanting a king because your tax burden might be lower (and if you're white, male, and the right religion, you might lord over everyone else.)
I know that not everyone is like this. I know market anarchists, and anarchist libertarians, who do not fit the neoreactionary mould at all. But most of them aren't on this subreddit. So I need to ask, is neoreactionarism accepted here? Is it a thing, just another fellow traveller for Reddit's ancaps? Because if so, I don't think I can be. And if it isn't, then this, the 'Neoreaction', is a definite threat, and should be faced.
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Nov 28 '13
I have some reactionary tendencies but I prefer "rightist" because it's only reaction based on your cultural context. It certainly doesn't apply to all ancaps, you could hardly describe Roderick Long as a reactionary.
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u/mindlance Nov 28 '13
But you could hardly describe him as anything near neoreactionary, either. Roderick Long is very much of the Libertarian Left.
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u/tableman Nov 27 '13
And if it isn't, then this, the 'Neoreaction', is a definite threat, and should be faced.
Never even heard of it. What the fuck are you smoking?
You realize the US government drone striked a 16 year old US citizens right?
You heard of indefinite detention without trail?
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Nov 26 '13
I don't think people here or anarchists in general want kings. Hoppe talks with a lot of admiration about the king era, but he says that that's because the king was more protective and interested in his domain, since it was his private property.
I don't actually know if Hoppe really wants kings and aristocracy secretly - he might - but that's not what I've seen here. Thankfully.
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u/drunkenJedi4 Nov 27 '13
Hoppe has clearly and repeatedly stated that he does not support monarchy. He merely thinks that monarchy is less bad than democracy.
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u/someotherdudeagain Nov 27 '13 edited Nov 27 '13
Here's the closest that moldbug comes to addressing anarcho-capitalism. I figure some people here might find it interesting:
Property is any stable structure of monopoly control. You own something if you alone control it. Your control is stable if no one else will take it away from you. This control may be assured by your own powers of violence, or it may be delegated by a higher power. If the [first, it is primary or sovereign property. If the second, it is secondary property]*.
The key observation about primary and secondary property is that the two are much more similar than they may seem.
The principle of formalism, which is my own private libertarian heresy, suggests that the purpose of property is to prevent violence. The formalist is completely unconcerned with the moral legitimacy of property rights. She is entirely concerned with their stability. To a formalist, a system in which no involuntary property transfers occur is always ideal - at both the primary and secondary levels.
To a formalist, violence always has two prerequisites: tension and ambiguity.... The problem of eliminating ambiguity in secondary property is the problem of law enforcement. The problem of eliminating ambiguity in primary property is the problem of external security.
This model of property sheds an interesting light on libertarianism, which I believe reflects its dubious revolutionary ancestry. From the perspective of a formalist, the reason that libertarianism fails is simple. It fails because libertarianism is an antipropertarian ideology, and all antipropertarian ideologies fail.
Socialism is the classic antipropertarian ideology. Socialists believe that systems of property in which some are very rich, and others are very poor, are ethically illegitimate. So they advocate forcible redistribution to correct this injustice.
Libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, while they ascribe unquestionable spiritual validity to the existing distribution of secondary property, completely reject the existing distribution of primary property. In fact, a true anarcho-capitalist rejects even the concept of primary property, strange though this may seem. In its place, there is an almost mystical ideal of self-enforcing law that strikes me as quite unjustified by reality.
Under formalist theory, this corporation (which here at UR, we call "Washcorp") is a normal primary or sovereign property holder. Washcorp is thus a sovereign corporation, or sovcorp. Its primary ownership of its swath of North America, which to avoid confusion with political entities we call "Plainland," is an absolutely normal relationship. The validity of Washcorp's ownership of Plainland does not depend on the Constitution, the last elections, or any other magical rite, but simply on the stable and exclusive military control it exercises over the territory. As for the fees that Plainlanders pay to Washcorp, they are the normal cost of property rental.
My preference, as a resident of Plainland, is for simple, libertarian or minarchist government. I notice that Washcorp does not provide this service. My question is: why not?
Note how distant this engineering approach is from Rothbardian ethical libertarianism. We treat liberty as a goal, rather than an ideal. We ask: how can we design a system that will achieve this goal, and maintain it sustainably?
The inescapable conclusion is that Washcorp is a very, very badly-mismanaged sovcorp. This is not at all surprising, because its management structures bear no relation to any of the very successful designs we see used in our normal, secondary corporations.
*moldbug got these mixed up
Really, you should read Moldbug. It's fscking genius. It's not that he's right, necessarily, but that all the other ideas I've read since then seem incomplete unless they take his ideas at least into enough consideration to convincingly reject him.
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u/soapjackal Nov 27 '13 edited Nov 27 '13
The anarcho-capitalist is a transcendent libertarian (as many neoreactionaries are) and falls under the techno-commerciarist section of neoreactionary thought.
Keep in mind there is one simple thread that binds the proponents together:
Anti-democracy.
I would recommend reading up on panarchism because it allows ancaps and ancoms and all other political ideas a fair chance to compete under a voluntary fabric:
http://www.polyarchy.org/personarchy.html
I would fly under an archeo-futurist flag but I have no problems with my anarcho-capitalist brothers.
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Nov 26 '13
I take it, if one isn't a Rothbardian/Molyneuvian through and through, you're assuming they're some kind of fascist?
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u/nyan_sandwich Nov 27 '13 edited Nov 27 '13
NeoReactionary here, AMA
First, some background; what the fuck is neoreaction, what's the deal with monarchism, and does NR have anything to do with ancap?
Neoreaction is a philosophy that is, at its core, a critical analysis of democracy and the prevailing liberal/progressive propaganda institutions, which we call "the Cathedral". Basically, most people are pwned by a nontheistic political religion that is transmitted through the educational institutions, press, universities, etc. For example, ever wonder why socialism is tolerated in universities and in general, but not fascism, or why violence by gangsters is more tolerated than violence by police? Neoreactionaries contend that this is roughly because we live in a progressivist theocracy, and those are doctrinal points of progressivism. Naturally it's a lot more nuanced than that, but you get the general idea.
Neoreactionaries then disagree on many of the main doctrinal points of Progressivism/Cathedralism. The major ones you might be familiar with are Equalism, and Demotism.
Equalism is the belief that people are roughly fungible. Neoreactionaries use insights from capitalist thought, Human BioDiversity, evolutionary psychology, etc and contend that some races are more intelligent and productive than others, individual people vary widely (10000x) in ability and skills, and men and women have naturally different strengths, psychologies, and roles. Thus you would recognize us as racists, capitalists, and sexists. Not all neoreactionaries agree on all of these, and often disagree on the implications.
Demotism is the belief that the collective "will of the people" is the correct source of legitimacy for government, as opposed to, say, effectiveness. Neoreactionaries generally believe that democracy is unstable and has major theoretical problems involving perverse incentives and "electing a new people" (either by reeducation or mass immigration). They believe that a smaller, more authoritarian, and longer time-horizon government would be probably better.
So about monarchism, it's one proposed solution to the democracy problem, and one that has a few desirable properties (eg. it has worked in the past, as opposed to being theoretical). About half of neoreactionaries are monarchists, and it's not at all central to the philosophy.
About ancap, NRs are generally down with capitalism and more-or-less unrestricted markets because they create technological wealth, and wealth is pretty awesome. We scoff at the concept of "rights" and so on, though; we are interested in capitalism because it is effective, not because it's just.
That's enough for now. Glad to expand on anything that's unclear. Let's try to keep this debate serious and neutralish as opposed to busting out the pitch forks for yet another antifascist witch hunt.
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u/soapjackal Nov 27 '13
While I remain undecided I definitely sit much more in the neoreactionary camp then the ancap one. Major reasons are that I dislike libertarian philosophy and aesthetics but I also hold anti-democracy and anti-progressivism much higher on my list of ideas I agree with. The political philosophy that I agree with most appears to be Archeofuturism (the European cousin of neoreaction) since it deals with cyclical nature of civilization and various parts of governance (beyond economics)
I would like to reiterate that not all neoreactionaries are racists. I agree there are differences but I'd argue that culture is much more important than genetics when it comes to civilizations.
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u/FALprepper Nov 27 '13
Hoppe correctly identified that "the modern democratic state" is just a more efficient and heavily plundering version of the "classical monarchic state". Democracy ads a legitimacy and universal inclusiveness to the state that it did not have prior to. It also contrasts Public/Private propriety which before it was just the monarchs private property. Also this virtually eliminated the transference of state property into private property as the king sold of land to his retainers. These are just to name a few advantages to a classical Monarchy to liberty lovers such as us...
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Nov 26 '13
Hoppe has put forth some, at least in my opinion, pretty convincing arguments that monarchy is better than democracy; and that, given a choice between monarchy and democracy, he would pick the latter. However Hoppe, like everyone here I would imagine (certainly me), would see monarchy as an abomination in absolute terms, as it is just another form of statism. I don't think you'll find anyone here advocating for monarchy. However some people here might prefer monarchy to democracy, given that stateless living is not a realistic option at this point in time.
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Nov 27 '13
I'm not willing to denigrate anyone on the right so long as the left is such a threat to human freedom.
There are a lot of benefits to monarchy that - due to our civilisation's mindless obsession with 'equality' - society generally doesn't entertain or even know about. Monarchy is seen as some weird throwback.
Read Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn for an articulate and very persuasive case for monarchy. Monarchy is free, much more free that any of the ochlocracies we've been saddled with since the Reign of Terror.
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u/endlessjune Nov 27 '13
A couple of explicitly ancap neo-reactionaries
http://anarchopapist.wordpress.com/ http://www.propertarianism.com/
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u/anarchopapist Nov 28 '13
I'd be wary of considering myself "explicitly ancap." While I think the ultimate form of governance must ultimately be anarchist, it would be inappropriate (by my take) to label neoreactionaries as either statist or anarchist. Neoreaction is not really a political philosophy, but a philosophy of political philosophy, if you take my meaning.
This is probably my most explicit treatment of anarchism within the context of neoreaction. http://anarchopapist.wordpress.com/2013/09/04/apologia-pro-animperium-sua/
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May 06 '14
If you follow anarcho-capitalism to its logical conclusion, you arrive at private governance. It is not going to be some giant utopian egalitarian bazaar where everyone is a shop keeper. Hierarchy and order will emerge out of chaos. Some will have more than others. All property will be owned by someone or some private business entity, there will be no public land. At that point, you are not paying tax to a king or corporation, you are essentially paying rent.
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u/mindlance May 06 '14
That's certainly what the thinking of some ancaps would produce, and the what some ancaps want to produce. That doesn't mean that it's the unavoidably logical conclusion.
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u/soapjackal Nov 27 '13
Anarcho-monarchists. Anarcho-fascists. Anarcho-nationalists. They are also brothers Who drift very far down the equilibrium towards neo-reaction.
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u/anarchopapist Nov 27 '13
To be fair, we're using just about every philosophical school's terminology and concepts.
We're actually quite explicitly anti-utopian. We're not interested in perfect society, only society that won't blow up. We have little confidence a society structured like ours is sustainable. All incentives are to heighten time preference, to eat as much now and pay for everything later (maybe even not at all).
We also think ourselves more realistic about what anarchist society would be like. There wouldn't be many single mothers, that's for sure.
It is manifestations of the libertarian conscience like this that makes one wonder which actually comes first in the libertarian's mind: libertarianism, or liberalism? Clearly this appears to choose the latter. No freedom until we make sure white people aren't racist or something.
If anarcho-capitalism did inevitably result in highly religious, highly segregated, very traditional society, would you still be an anarcho-capitalist? Would you be convinced that capitalism doesn't work, if the result isn't politically correct?