On Libertarianism and Statecraft: Introduction
By Insula Qui
Libertarianism and Neoreaction
The political theory of neoreaction is largely built on the concepts of formalism and neocameralism, and is concerned with competent statecraft. Libertarians often have no answer to the question of statecraft, as libertarians tend to reject statecraft on a conceptual level as well as a practical level. Libertarians view the state as either an agency that ought to only provide security and dispute resolution or a criminal organization that has monopolized a territory. This frequently leads to a confusion between state and statecraft which keeps libertarians from responding properly to neoreactionary arguments.
Neoreaction posits that in order to restore a proper political order, those who are able to become worthy should do so, accept power, and rule. A system of absolute monarchic governance spread across a competing patchwork of states could create effective government, or at least more effective government than modern nation-states under liberal democracy. The highest degree of corporate governance may seem harsh and dystopian, but the theoretical arguments remain solid. The system of hierarchy coupled with participation and profit serves the neoreactionary philosophy well. But it would be a great folly to simply absorb neoreactionary theory, as all good libertarians ought to reject corporations as they currently exist and states of all forms.
The Propertarians
Although an extremely niche perspective, the greatest current intellectual challenger to traditional libertarianism is the system of propertarianism. While the movement has problems with communication, it has produced some worthwhile challenges to libertarian assumptions. The propertarians assert that answering these questions requires getting rid of the non-aggression principle and much of traditional libertarian thought.
Historical libertarian societies have been either environmentally protected against invasion or insignificant enough to avoid invasion. There has never been a libertarian society that had to fully provide its own defense when it entered into competition with larger states. To simply assume that military defense, domestic security, and law courts will be fully funded and properly respected in a libertarian social order is somewhat naïve. Proposals for all of these have been made, but there is no guarantee as of yet that any of them are correct. Furthermore, untrusting people without wide systems of reciprocity cannot form a society that is able to compete with other societies. Thus, if libertarians lack an answer to creating trust and reciprocity, then they will lack the ability to defend a libertarian social order once it is created.
Even though this is not an endorsement of propertarianism, the answer to the questions proposed is some form of statecraft. To properly establish a libertarian society, there must be formal organization beyond the ethical baseline. We cannot simply assume that the free market will solve every problem, especially those involving the demand for coercion. However, we also cannot concede the necessity of the state, as that would go against our entire philosophy and require either a ground-up reconstruction of libertarian theory or an abandonment thereof. To solve all of these problems, it is necessary to create a libertarian theory of statecraft.
The Folly of Libertarians
Libertarianism is fundamentally antithetical to statism, but contrary to popular wisdom, not to governance and statecraft. There is no libertarian theory on how a government ought to govern because libertarianism has been an anti-government philosophy, and confusion between government and governance leads to limited thinking. Furthermore, by not focusing on governance, libertarians are at risk of ignoring the fact that without the state, there still will be massive structures of governance because even voluntary associations require bylaws and organizational structure. Thus, there is only folly in ignoring the question of statecraft.
The best work on this subject so far has been done by Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Spencer Heath. Even Hoppe never answered the question of statecraft itself as it relates to the theory of covenant communities. A libertarian political system will certainly be oriented around communities with their own rules, and yet no proper theory has been developed for how politics and statecraft would function without the state. Libertarians have spectacularly failed by never presenting a functional theory of how to establish political systems and how to make political systems be stable. In our fear of governance, we have forgotten that the more governance there is, the more there can be cohesive social structures and economic calculation. Although this governance cannot ever be involuntary within a libertarian society, governance is absolutely vital for any semblance of a cohesive civilization.
Furthermore, it will not do to simply assert that people will figure out how to govern themselves when they are left without the state. To be able to get to the point where there is a capacity to self-govern, there first needs to be a critical mass of people within a sufficiently large geographical area who find statelessness to be desirable. Lacking a theory of statecraft will cost libertarian support that could easily have been had. Furthermore, there are still incentives in place when it comes to the structure of governance which can be aprioristically explored.
Institutions
The formation of institutions has characterized the political development of the West for centuries. One can define eras and countries by their institutions. This may be hard to accept for many libertarians, as most prefer to think of history simply as the advance of industry resulting in the advance of civilization, but it is also necessary to account for the entities that are beyond the conventional view of the market. No society can defeat the necessity of managerial structures simply by resorting to idealism and blind hope. It is human nature to have political structures; what libertarianism critiques is the involuntary form that these structures often take. Libertarianism can aptly demonstrate the insufficiency of the state, but has not proposed and demonstrated viable alternatives for all functions currently monopolized by the state.
Mission Statement
Over the course of the next three months, I will define the relations of libertarianism and statecraft both within the state and outside of it. I will build a system that demonstrates both the principles and necessity of wise statecraft. The following twelve articles will tackle the questions of Libertarian political parties, the role of property, how libertarian governance works, wise principles of statecraft for libertarians, and many others.
This series of articles was written to tie-in with my next book Anarcho-Monarchism, which will be released in April 2018. The central themes in the book are closely related to the themes of these articles. The book will expand upon the questions of trust, politics, force, and market governance alongside other libertarian reactionary theory.
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