On the Zeroth Position
January 22, 2016
Regular readers of my column at Liberty.me as well as my own site will quickly encounter the term ‘Zeroth Position.’ As it is used nowhere else at the time of this writing, an explanation of the meaning, origin, and rationale of the term is necessary. We will begin with an overview of political terms and then see how they factor into the Zeroth Position.
If there is a zeroth position, then there must also be positions of higher ordinal value. The first two positions, like much of contemporary political terminology, can be traced to the aftermath of the French Revolution, although their origins are much older. Conservatism, the first position, favors retention of traditional social and political institutions. Moderate conservatives emphasize progress to an extent which will not disrupt societal continuity and stability, while more ardent conservatives may seek to return to an idealized past. The term was first used in a political context in 1818 during the period of Bourbon restoration to denote people who wished to repeal policies from the French Revolution. The meaning of conservatism varies between societies because traditional social and political institutions vary between societies, but most conservatives support economic freedom to a greater extent than social freedom.
Liberalism, the second position, has been and still is the primary opponent of conservatism. Liberalism is founded upon the ideas of liberty and equality. As these values frequently contradict each other, liberals divide into classical liberals and progressive liberals, with classical liberals prioritizing liberty and progressive liberals prioritizing equality. Moderate liberals seek gradual progress, while more ardent liberals may seek to quickly and radically transform society. Liberalism originated during the Age of Enlightenment, with its foundations being laid throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Liberals reject the ideas of state religion, absolute monarchy, the divine right of kings, and hereditary nobility in favor of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, secular democratic government, and (in the case of classical liberals) free markets.
The Third Position originated later than the first two, and is best understood as a synthesis of the extreme elements of both. This position, best described as authoritarian, combines reactionary right social views with radical left economic views. The term originated in the early 20th century, and has been used by both National Bolsheviks, who combine right-wing nationalism with left-wing Bolshevism, and Strasserists, who combine right-wing fascism with left-wing syndicalism. Moderation among such authoritarians can usually be found only in the means they are willing to use to achieve their ends, not in the ends themselves. Third Positionists support racial separatism, ethnopluralism, and environmentalism while opposing communism, capitalism, and individual liberty.
Thus far, we have covered three corners of the Nolan chart. The only remaining corner is libertarianism, which promotes liberty through individual sovereignty, non-aggression, and private property rights. Moderate libertarians seek to merely reduce the size and scope of government, while more ardent libertarians favor anarcho-capitalism. Like classical liberalism, libertarianism originates in the Age of Enlightenment, although a different construction of libertarianism from reactionary principles is possible. Libertarians favor both economic and social freedom.
One could label libertarianism as the Fourth Position by going in chronological order of rise to prominence in world affairs, but there are several reasons to consider libertarianism, particularly its consistent, anarchist form, the Zeroth Position instead. The first is that all other political positions can be expressed in terms of libertarian anarchism plus contradictions. Because the state is a group of people who exercise a monopoly on initiatory force within a geographical area, all statist positions (including the First, Second, and Third Positions) necessarily advocate some degree of initiatory force. When people agree to engage in rational argumentation, they implicitly accept certain behavioral norms. Two of these are that truth is preferable to falsehood and reason is preferable to force, for the alternative positions make engaging in peaceful discourse both a contradiction and a ruse. Other types of anarchism also fall prey to contradictions, such as the fact that arguing against hierarchical structures requires the use of a hierarchical structure in the form of language. Second, humans have existed in anatomically modern form for about 200,000 years, but city-states have existed for less than 10,000 years and nation-states have existed for only 5,000 years. Thus, for the vast majority of human (pre)history, people lived in stateless societies. Finally, global statism is unsustainable on many counts. Whether by agorism, civil disobedience, cryptocurrency, peaceful parenting, philosophy, political migration, seasteading, technology, violent revolution, or some combination of the aforementioned, statelessness will return someday unless something causes human extinction before then.
This concludes the explanation of the meaning, origin, and rationale of the term ‘Zeroth Position’. My other philosophical works deal with its applications and implications.
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