5/27/2018
By Insula Qui
Although the title correlates to the social classes this article references, I am not going to use the particular terms. This is mainly because they are already used in contradictory ways and I do not aim to cause any confusion for other followers of Spencer Heath and classical monarchism. However, we can purpose those elements discussed by Heath and the classical monarchists into a functional examination of all political power. Furthermore, this analysis of power will ultimately answer the question of abusing power under voluntary governance.
Whenever there is a political system, there must be a ruling class and a servile class, the servile class must always exist as subjects to the ruling class as otherwise, the ruling class would have no power. This means that, in the context of politics, we have already established a perpetual power structure which must exist irregardless of any outside factors. But this power structure could not be retained without the ruling class having the support of the military, so the military must be aligned with the ruling class in ideology and action.
But there must also be a way in which the ruling class can prevent the military class from rising up against the authority in power and the servile class from revolting against the military. This is the ideological class, whether it is religious, journalistic, or intellectual. The state always requires propaganda to ensure that there is never a mass uprising against the state. The construction of this united state front is accepted by many, but usually from people who accept the legitimacy of the state and never from those who support the practice of libertarian statecraft.
To establish a correct perspective of statist and libertarian statecraft from this fairly common view of the state, we need to start by examining democracy. Modern liberal democracy has been the state ideology of the occident since the second world war and is thus the most relevant philosophy to examine. Furthermore, democracy is the most convoluted of any system and deserves the most attention. Democracy is distinct from all other systems as the ruling class seemingly requires the volition of the servile class to ascend to power. The ruling class will always exist and the servile class will always exist, however, the servile class can combine to choose members of the ruling class. This is faulty as a premise and naive as a practice.
First, common consent is never actual consent as common people are not presented with state policy but human representatives. And even if they were, the majority in the form of non-voters and the opposition has never accepted the decision of the supporting voting minority. And no representative has the obligation to fulfil any of the reasons for which they were inducted into office and as such, there is no popular consent to state policy. This is even though there is popular consent to a select portion of the ruling class. However, most of the ruling class is comprised of people who climbed the ranks of various bureaucratic organizations and as such have no mandate from the servile class. This should erase any notion of democracies representing the people within them.
The democratic state must also be the most authoritarian state as the existence of the ruling class depends on a strong military and propagandistic class. The politicians must retain their power by creating a supposed mandate from the people, this is only possible whenever the military does not challenge the ruling class and the people do not question the ruling class. This means that the military-propaganda classes must always be on the side of the ruling class via special subsidy and command.
The democratic state survives with repressing any dissidents and creating a monolithic spread of information that elevates the state. This is what the neoreactionaries call the cathedral, the state forming an uniform counter-popular force to prevent having to face unrestrained popular opinion. People cannot have dangerous extremist ideology that could upset the current order and even if they do, must be completely hopeless when faced with the tremendous military organization. This fundamentally negates democracy while preserving the image thereof and allows for totalitarianism beyond what any autocrat could imagine.
If we move from the discussion of democracy to the discussion of autocracy, we discover a much more simplistic system of rule. The servile class expects protection and good rule which allows the autocrat to retain his power. This leaves the autocrat with two options, he can be a proper monarch or a tyrant. If the autocrat decides to exercise his power in a benevolent manner, he will retain a largely temporary and limited military force to deliver on his promise of protection. Standing armies are a largely modern concept that would not have been possible without the synthesis of classical liberalism and civic philosophy. He will also not use propaganda, however, he will ban any propaganda against his autocratic regime.
If an autocrat chooses to exercise his powers as a tyrant, the entire situation changes and starts to resemble democracy. The paranoid tendencies within the autocrat cause him to exercise massive propaganda and military might to suppress any potential rebellion and prevent the servile class from revolting. By doing so, however, the autocrat gives the servile class good cause to revolt and displace the tyrant. Since the tyrant has no trust when it comes to the servile class, he will never be able to deliver that what is necessary to retain his power.
An aristocratic regime is more complicated but mostly follows the same principles as an autocratic regime. The main difference is that the mandate of the state is split across multiple people instead of just one. The choices made are very similar and the incentives do not massively differ from autocracy. However, the choices of an aristocracy will be the compound choices of the aristocrats instead of the singular choice of the autocrat, this aids in easing uncertainty. The aristocrats will tend to be tyrannical to a lesser extent but with more consistency.
We can now look at anarcho-capitalism using the exact same framework. The premise of an anarcho-capitalist society is to combine the servile class with the ruling class, eliminate propaganda, and establish the allegiance of the military to the self-ruling class. Furthermore, as each person has a mandate to use violence under the same circumstances, the military melds into the self-ruling class creating a self-ruling and self-defending class.
The main critique of anarcho-capitalism is then that it is unsustainable, that eventually, the propagandistic class would develop alongside a military class to reinstate a ruling class. And this seems to be true, the military class seemingly profits from having an exclusive use of force, which they can only have if there is a central agency that mandates their monopoly on force. Furthermore, the propagandistic class can seek subsidy from those willing to offer wealth in exchange for power.
From this arises the perpetual fear that anarcho-capitalism would create a plutocracy. The only people who can subsidize propaganda and exclusively contract the military are those with enough wealth to do so. Eventually, they need to collect taxes again as they will be unable to sustain their violent form of rule, but once this has been established, anarcho-capitalism has fundamentally been defeated. This is why it is not productive to dismiss every claim that there is a potential for the warlords to take over.
However, realistically, it is impossible to conquer a population who aims to be free without entrenched power over another population. Making people servile is only possible insofar as it is possible to spread a culture of servility over these people, but this concern is extremely relevant if we are to have a libertarian form of statecraft. Even though this is not a realistic concern in an anarcho-capitalist system, it is a very pertinent one when we introduce libertarian statecraft to anarcho-capitalism. There are seeming downsides to accepting voluntary rule by a market agency.
A libertarian form of statecraft must then distinguish the military and ruling classes from the servile class. Furthermore, to avoid the necessity for a propagandistic class, the libertarian form of governance must avoid ever causing as much disutility as to disincentivize membership. The only proper way to avoid the necessity for propaganda and the danger thereof is to provide services that do not need to be propagandized. Furthermore, the military class who executes the will of the ruling class must never be beholden to the interests of the ruling class. The military must always be first directly responsible to the public before the ruling class.
This can fundamentally create a balance of powers where the ruling class must provide services with the real consent of the public. And the public is given a choice between various ruling classes insofar as the public has within their own power to find another ruling class. This will fundamentally ensure that there can be no such thing as a parasitic government under a form of libertarian statecraft. By analyzing power, we create a system with a stable balance of powers that can harmonize the benefits of liberty with those of authority.
<<The Importance of Sovereignty, the Rule of Law, and Social Credit+++++++++++++Double Factor Monopoly>>