a ''return'' to traditionalism, a rejection of ''communism''... - Page 5 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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The non-democratic state: Platonism, Fascism, Theocracy, Monarchy etc.
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#14940207
Political Interest wrote:Although capitalism is out of control


I was once a third-way guy. A self-proclaimed fascist (and later an imperialist).

Let me just provoke some thought here and tell you that nothing you have seen in your lifetime as "out-of-control capitalism" is capitalism at all.

True capitalism, Anarcho-Capitalism, is nothing more than the reassertion of the Natural Order.

Fascism and other third ways are reactionary attempts to undue the damage of communism and democracy via the same means that led to that degeneracy in the first place.

What would you rather have? Women seeking traditional marriage and children naturally? Or because they get subsidy from the state to do so (like Hitler's marriage program did)?

I choose the former, I choose Anarcho-Capitalism as a Christian and a European Traditionalist.

Just food for thought friend. ;)
#14940255
Victoribus Spolia wrote:I was once a third-way guy. A self-proclaimed fascist (and later an imperialist).

Let me just provoke some thought here and tell you that nothing you have seen in your lifetime as "out-of-control capitalism" is capitalism at all.

True capitalism, Anarcho-Capitalism, is nothing more than the reassertion of the Natural Order.

Fascism and other third ways are reactionary attempts to undue the damage of communism and democracy via the same means that led to that degeneracy in the first place.

What would you rather have? Women seeking traditional marriage and children naturally? Or because they get subsidy from the state to do so (like Hitler's marriage program did)?

I choose the former, I choose Anarcho-Capitalism as a Christian and a European Traditionalist.

Just food for thought friend. ;)


Food for thought indeed. Especially when you consider that all over the world prior to say, 1914 with WWI, every State in existence (including Autocratic Tsarist Russia!) would be considered mind-numbingly ''Libertarian'' and Minarchist by today's standards of governance.
#14941242
annatar1914 wrote: Especially when you consider that all over the world prior to say, 1914 with WWI, every State in existence (including Autocratic Tsarist Russia!) would be considered mind-numbingly ''Libertarian'' and Minarchist by today's standards of governance.


Absolutely.
#14941251
annatar1914 wrote:Food for thought indeed. Especially when you consider that all over the world prior to say, 1914 with WWI, every State in existence (including Autocratic Tsarist Russia!) would be considered mind-numbingly ''Libertarian'' and Minarchist by today's standards of governance.


Yes and WW1 was sort of the reason why governments exploded in size. Until the advent of the rifle wars were mostly fought by military professionals who represented a pretty small proportion of the population, civilians might bolster their numbers in times of need but the real killing was generally done by the professionals because skill at arms and having special equipment (horses, armour etc) was a limiting factor in military effectiveness, if you didn't have quite a lot of training and relatively expensive (hand crafted) equipment you weren't much use.

Muskets and especially rifles in conjunction with mass production techniques changed all that, now you had literally battle winning weapons that were really easy to use and could be relatively inexpensively produced in such vast numbers that you could arm the entire population of your dominion if you really wanted. Given equal technology most wars are won by who could mobilise the largest number of effective troops but thanks to the cheap and easily mass produced rifle just about anyone with a pulse could be an effective trooper. This lead to warmakers increasingly look at their civilian population as basically reservists, as soldiers awaiting mobilisation. It is incumbent on warleaders to look after their troops, to organise for them a pension, healthcare, training etc. This is the real germ of totalitarianism, where it came from. An early example might be Napoleon but the real model was set by Prussia in the run up to WW1.

WW1 was the war that represents the high point of the military doctrine of mobilise everybody and give them a rifle but even in WW1 the beginning of the end for the citizen-soldier can be seen as new weapons like the tank and fighter plane made their first appearance. Once again potentially effective weapons were emerging that were relatively expensive and hard to master, weapons that favour the military professional.

WW2 was a war that tempered the mass mobilisation doctrine with a great deal more emphasis on the new weapons as they continually were improved and became more complex. The most spectacular demonstration that the battle winning status of the citizen-soldier was passing away was the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

From WW2 onwards most serious militaries are once again treating the citizen as an optional extra to war rather than the main weight. And so the civilian will once again be freed to live for himself providing he pays his protectors a modest tithe.
#14941362
Victoribus Spolia wrote:Absolutely.


Well, there's a reason for that ''1914'' in my username after all... I've said it before, that 1914, the beginning of the 1914-1945 Great European/Second Thirty Year's War, is the beginning of the end for modern civilization. The Conflict from 1945-1989 was the Cold War, the destruction of the Soviet Union and the consequences from that. The Gulf War of 1990 (the ''Mother of All Battles'' of Saddam Hussein) to the present was actually started with the Islamic Iranian Revolution in 1979 and was as much an attempt to contain the Islamic Revolution as the Great European War of 1914-1945 was running parallel to an effort to contain the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The Next and final cycle of wars will draw into a single Nexus point the trends of all the previous conflicts, as I will be happy to elaborate on.

Prepare your families.... The greater part of mankind will be dead in 40 years.

Solar Cross, you said;

Yes and WW1 was sort of the reason why governments exploded in size. Until the advent of the rifle wars were mostly fought by military professionals who represented a pretty small proportion of the population, civilians might bolster their numbers in times of need but the real killing was generally done by the professionals because skill at arms and having special equipment (horses, armour etc) was a limiting factor in military effectiveness, if you didn't have quite a lot of training and relatively expensive (hand crafted) equipment you weren't much use.

Muskets and especially rifles in conjunction with mass production techniques changed all that, now you had literally battle winning weapons that were really easy to use and could be relatively inexpensively produced in such vast numbers that you could arm the entire population of your dominion if you really wanted. Given equal technology most wars are won by who could mobilise the largest number of effective troops but thanks to the cheap and easily mass produced rifle just about anyone with a pulse could be an effective trooper. This lead to warmakers increasingly look at their civilian population as basically reservists, as soldiers awaiting mobilisation. It is incumbent on warleaders to look after their troops, to organise for them a pension, healthcare, training etc. This is the real germ of totalitarianism, where it came from. An early example might be Napoleon but the real model was set by Prussia in the run up to WW1.

WW1 was the war that represents the high point of the military doctrine of mobilise everybody and give them a rifle but even in WW1 the beginning of the end for the citizen-soldier can be seen as new weapons like the tank and fighter plane made their first appearance. Once again potentially effective weapons were emerging that were relatively expensive and hard to master, weapons that favour the military professional.

WW2 was a war that tempered the mass mobilisation doctrine with a great deal more emphasis on the new weapons as they continually were improved and became more complex. The most spectacular demonstration that the battle winning status of the citizen-soldier was passing away was the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

From WW2 onwards most serious militaries are once again treating the citizen as an optional extra to war rather than the main weight. And so the civilian will once again be freed to live for himself providing he pays his protectors a modest tithe.


The conclusion of this is not entirely correct. Reading Carl Schmidt among others, I conclude that the Partisan, the Civilian Insurgent, is probably one of the most important factors in modern warfare.

The privatization of military arms, and the personalization of causes for which to fight and kill for, is making the modern military as we know it (or think we know it) increasingly a relic.

There has been a privatization of the State, of the Military, of modern life in general, and this trend is continuing. Even with countries like the Soviet Union you have only a vestigial remnant of a Westphalian style State in any modern sense, with the private organization of the Party engulfing most State functions.

But I'll go forward soon with how ''un-modern'' most of modernity truly is now.
#14941367
Political Interest wrote:Annatar,

I am delighted to hear this from you.

Like you I also believe in a third economic system between capitalism and communism.

I reject communism because of what they did to the Russian royal family, their contempt for religion and their less than pragmatic views on economic questions. The more excessive cultural forms of Marxism that we saw in Maoist China and in the Anglosphere are absolutley horrendous.

Although capitalism is out of control the alternative was never communism.

And we can certainly have the good aspects of the Soviet Union without the negative ones. I think that a lot of what was good about the Soviet experience would have existed with or without communism. Those were qualities and traits that would have existed in whatever system the Russians attempted to set up in the course of their negotiation into modernity.


Sorry PI my friend, I seem to have run myself ragged and only now am I addressing your comments. There's nothing really I could disagree with what you're saying, and I suppose even were I to call it ''Socialism/Communism'', it has to be some sort of organic development gradually working itself into and as part of the human condition, much as the toothbrush or indoor plumbing.

Capitalism isn't going to be around much longer, civilization will go on without it, but we have to be aware of the conditional and provisional nature of even our most rigidly and firmly held ideological beliefs concerning Capitalism.

It's just as an objective viewer that I see the clash for the future between Socialism revived, and Anarcho-Capitalism in some form.
#14942183
Victoribus Spolia wrote:Let me just provoke some thought here and tell you that nothing you have seen in your lifetime as "out-of-control capitalism" is capitalism at all.


It may not have been out of control capitalism but it is certainly liberal enough to give us an idea of what an unregulated market and profit driven society will create. It leads to suffering, people unable to eat or live comfortably. Everyone is constantly feeling insecure under our system, and the result is that we are always working out of fear that we could become destitute. In Europe it is a bit better, but in the Anglosphere and especially in America it is simply too much. I cannot understand how Americans can even live under such a system. In the USA a person can lose their job, fall ill or make a wrong choice and their whole material life is in jeopardy. What this produces is a ruthlessness and poor mental state among those who may find themselves in some level of material security and a very severe suffering in the unemployed or working poor.

It has an influence on the psychological state of peope as well. The ruthless and competitive environment creates a person who has to be very tough but there is a certain lack of compassion and good will in society as a result of it. Unregulated market systems lead people to be unpleasant and materialistic. Careerism becomes not only a question of pursuing an interest in one's own life but a means of survival. And the survivalism makes people cynical. There is a reason why there is such a lack of trust between people in Anglo-Saxon countries.

In both England and America there are many places in major cities where crime is high, the streets are badly maintained. You can find drug dealers, gangsters and prostitutes. Many people are forced to sleep homeless and then they become drug addicts. What is astounding is how this is considered acceptable and not some type of major crisis. It is utterly shameful that we tolerate such high levels of social disorder in what are supposed to be the leading nations of the world.

Victoribus Spolia wrote:True capitalism, Anarcho-Capitalism, is nothing more than the reassertion of the Natural Order.


It would be even worse than what we have now. No one could live happily under such a system. And the weaker members of society will not have a place.

Victoribus Spolia wrote:Fascism and other third ways are reactionary attempts to undue the damage of communism and democracy via the same means that led to that degeneracy in the first place.


The collection of ideologies and movements of the inter-war period which we call fascism had many flaws and began from many false premises. Their racism, militarism and imperialism were I think their main weaknesses. What I have in mind is not so much fascism but a paternalistic soft authoritarianism. The fascists thought that war and national struggle was a fundamental component of life and that the frontiers of the nation had to be advanced further and further. War was part of life in the mind of fascists. But the system I imagine is something different because the maintenance of peace and stability would be fundamental to such an ideology. It would be a type of non-offensive and non-aggressive nationalism that seeks to defend the nation but not aggressively try to conquer other countries or pursue racist policies.

Therefore what I have in mind is not fascism because I am not a racist or an imperialist. It is not communism either because I'm not a Marxist. And it's not liberalism because I do not really want a parliamentary democracy.

Victoribus Spolia wrote:What would you rather have? Women seeking traditional marriage and children naturally? Or because they get subsidy from the state to do so (like Hitler's marriage program did)?

I choose the former, I choose Anarcho-Capitalism as a Christian and a European Traditionalist.

Just food for thought friend. ;)


I appreciate your perspective. For me it is not so much a question of women choosing traditional marriage but both men and women returning to traditional ways of living and being.

I do not think Anarcho-Capitalism can produce this naturally. Under such a liberal system people are not likely to become traditional.

Under any system the return to traditional values would have to take place as part of a cultural revolution to reverse the influence of the past 70 years or so. I think it could be possible under any system but anarchism and capitalism are not going to produce conservative or traditional people.

annatar1914 wrote:Sorry PI my friend, I seem to have run myself ragged and only now am I addressing your comments. There's nothing really I could disagree with what you're saying, and I suppose even were I to call it ''Socialism/Communism'', it has to be some sort of organic development gradually working itself into and as part of the human condition, much as the toothbrush or indoor plumbing.

Capitalism isn't going to be around much longer, civilization will go on without it, but we have to be aware of the conditional and provisional nature of even our most rigidly and firmly held ideological beliefs concerning Capitalism.

It's just as an objective viewer that I see the clash for the future between Socialism revived, and Anarcho-Capitalism in some form.


Please do not apologise. We are all busy people.

I agree with what you say, the new economic system must be a natural evolution. It is only a question of what it will look like. And I think it could very well produce it's own challenges and issues.

What no one has really tried yet is the perfect combination of capitalism and socialism. Scandinavian social democracy has not even attempted this. But I think it could definitely be possible. The Chinese are showing us that state run enterprises can function efficiently and alongside private businesses. I have thought about a system where we would have the state provide the basics for people but allow free enterprise alongside this. Everyone will always have the safety net of a house, a job and health care but are free to become businessmen and participate in the market.

Soviet and Chinese socialism was always plan based. Scandinavian social democracy is not really planned but provides a basic safety net. And Western style free market capitalism has almost no planning or safety net. What we need is planning, social security and the market together. Five year plans as a coordination between the state and free enteprise all the while ensuring that housing, schooling, and health care are available always.
#14942326
PI, you said in reply to my apology for lateness of response that;


Please do not apologise. We are all busy people.


Still, I have always respected you personally and your worldview, so I try to make an effort to respond. You continued;

I agree with what you say, the new economic system must be a natural evolution. It is only a question of what it will look like. And I think it could very well produce it's own challenges and issues.


Sure, an organic development. I read somewhere that Satre began to move away from standard Marxist Leninism when he came to believe that if revolution and progress were part of the dialectical materialist dynamic, so too necessarily were tradition and reaction, counter-revolution...And all this was not part of the Marxian continuum of acceptable thought.

What no one has really tried yet is the perfect combination of capitalism and socialism. Scandinavian social democracy has not even attempted this. But I think it could definitely be possible. The Chinese are showing us that state run enterprises can function efficiently and alongside private businesses. I have thought about a system where we would have the state provide the basics for people but allow free enterprise alongside this. Everyone will always have the safety net of a house, a job and health care but are free to become businessmen and participate in the market.


Sounds very reasonable to be sure, in the best traditions of Christian inspired humanism and progress too as it appears to me. What I do know, still even after my turn away from Socialism is that this Globalist Neo-Liberal Capitalism is deadly to human civilization. VS seems to think that the problem is the State, but I am not sure about that; I am probably an incurable Statist.

Soviet and Chinese socialism was always plan based. Scandinavian social democracy is not really planned but provides a basic safety net. And Western style free market capitalism has almost no planning or safety net. What we need is planning, social security and the market together. Five year plans as a coordination between the state and free enteprise all the while ensuring that housing, schooling, and health care are available always.


Bears examination.

I also wanted to share with you PI, as you knew me from before on PoFo, is that I have always been a Materialist, a Theistic Materialist but one nonetheless. I simply could not and still cannot conceive of something or someone in creation as being ''spirit'' and yet a ''substance''. Perhaps it's a mental block or form of malign spiritual attack, but everything to me is material, angels and demons and the blessed and damned, in some manner perceptible or otherwise. I therefore feel some affinity to Materialists/Atheists who likewise might suffer this possible limitation. I know I'm not alone; i've mentioned before numerous times that John Milton and the Church Father Tertullian, among others being in the same camp as I.

I then have little use for Idealism even though I tried with tremendous amounts of reading Kant and Hegel and Liebniz and Berkeley to come to that point of view, feeling that it would make things easier for me theologically. But it hasn't one bit. The real world remains the real world, and the only one which is, excepting that God in His Heaven is very Great indeed, and so we in our fallen state cannot see everything that is material and everything that is real. That when the Fathers and Saints describe beings of ''Spirit'', or the ''invisible and bodiless Hosts'', they are speaking of beings which are just ordinarily imperceptible and which can take whatever form in reality they need or desire to take, unlike us in the world we know of. We only take on those ''spiritual'' forms when we die.And in Christian belief, it still seems necessary that with the Resurrection, we will all receive our bodies back, the same bodies, but glorified.

Idealism obviously lends itself to a very different worldview, that is against Communism as a modern ideology and all forms of materialism, but I cannot embrace it even if it has been a ''traditional'' element of Philosophy since Plato on. An Idealist posits (but cannot see or feel!) another order of Being which properly speaking only belongs to God Himself, and applies it to, or against, reality, creating a dualism which quite literally does not exist.

So I'm discovering another irony; that in my traditionalism, my Ancient Christian Orthodoxy, I have been more perhaps crudely physical and material in my belief than most intellectuals that have lived for at least the past 1000 years or so. So, I'm still the ''odd man out'', and such was not my intention...
#14942589
Political Interest wrote:it is certainly liberal enough to give us an idea of what an unregulated market and profit driven society will create.


You cannot derive liberalism and unregulated markets, by way of analogy no less, form illiberalism and regulated markets. :roll:

Political Interest wrote:I appreciate your perspective. For me it is not so much a question of women choosing traditional marriage but both men and women returning to traditional ways of living and being.


Even if such is artificial only because the state is making them or paying them? :eh:

Political Interest wrote:I do not think Anarcho-Capitalism can produce this naturally. Under such a liberal system people are not likely to become traditional.


Except it has, medieval Europe closely approximated what an AnCap world would look like, even its monarchies were just barely incompatible with AnCaps, but not by much due to their minarchist character.

Indeed, the longest stretch of religiosity and traditionalism that has ever existed in the west or any civilization for that matter, have generally existed under feudalism/Ancap conditions or minarchist monarchies.

Political Interest wrote:I do not think Anarcho-Capitalism can produce this naturally. Under such a liberal system people are not likely to become traditional.


Actually, they have no choice. There is no affirmative action, transgenderism, and feminism when there is no state, there is only people in a state of nature:

Behold feminism in the absence of the state:

Image

:lol:
#14942804
Good to see friends, Victoribus Spolia and Political Interest, talking. I respect your views and I welcome them, especially if they help me out in some of the philosophical logjam i've found myself in.

I have always been, btw, a Robert E. Howard fan, not only of his Conan works, but also his Kull and Solomon Kane stories, his horror and western tales, etc.. Even been to Cross Plains Texas and have met people who knew him down in Texas. He was actually a brilliant and creative man, and from my in depth studies of him and his writing, he would not be too far off from what you suggest in his own thinking.

You wrote;

Behold feminism in the absence of the state:

Image

:lol:


Love to talk more Robert E. Howard if you like.

I want to note too regarding feminism that nothing physically prevents men from being men, or women from being women, but that when a country has degenerated into idiocy through an excess of civilization (something which is a constant theme of R.E.H), people have the literal luxury of losing their sense of reality to a degree healthier and perhaps younger peoples do not. And what happens is that the overly-civilized get blotted out by both ''natural'' disaster and invasions by more primitive peoples, having got to a point where they cannot adapt and survive threats easily handled by more sensible and virile folk.

How does this relate to my points in this thread? And your side conversation with Political Interest? Plenty, as it turns out....
#14943237
annatar1914 wrote:Still, I have always respected you personally and your worldview, so I try to make an effort to respond.


And the respect is definitely mutual. I always like reading your posts.

annatar1914 wrote:Sure, an organic development. I read somewhere that Satre began to move away from standard Marxist Leninism when he came to believe that if revolution and progress were part of the dialectical materialist dynamic, so too necessarily were tradition and reaction, counter-revolution...And all this was not part of the Marxian continuum of acceptable thought.


I think that what the Marxists did not understand was that people need some type of tradition and even a socialist country needs some basis in cohesion. If all institutions are deconstructed and abandoned the result will not be socialism but instead anarchy. The Chinese went very far in this direction, much more than the Soviets when they launched the Cultural Revolution. There was almost nothing gained from that period of Chinese history and the 1960s are thought of as something of a lost decade there. Anglo-Marxists have embraced similar notions of patriarchy and race privilege which if realised to their full extent will not produce a cohesive or stable socialist state. I do not think it is possible to have open door immigration, absolutely no gender roles and the institutionalisation of family life while also maintaining a stable socialist society for the proletariat to live well in.

annatar1914 wrote:Sounds very reasonable to be sure, in the best traditions of Christian inspired humanism and progress too as it appears to me. What I do know, still even after my turn away from Socialism is that this Globalist Neo-Liberal Capitalism is deadly to human civilization. VS seems to think that the problem is the State, but I am not sure about that; I am probably an incurable Statist.


I would say I am as well. The state can be used for any purpose. If it is in good hands it can be used to undertake projects to uplift human beings. Perhaps I am too idealistic but if there are intelligent and good men in charge there is nothing wrong with a large state. And even under the most liberal government it is still not possible to exist without a state. Democracy itself ends where the interests of the men who run the state end.

annatar1914 wrote:Bears examination.


I'm by no means dogmatic about economic questions. And would you also agree that in order for there to be this natural evolution into a new system of production economic dogmatism must be avoided?

annatar1914 wrote:I also wanted to share with you PI, as you knew me from before on PoFo, is that I have always been a Materialist, a Theistic Materialist but one nonetheless. I simply could not and still cannot conceive of something or someone in creation as being ''spirit'' and yet a ''substance''. Perhaps it's a mental block or form of malign spiritual attack, but everything to me is material, angels and demons and the blessed and damned, in some manner perceptible or otherwise. I therefore feel some affinity to Materialists/Atheists who likewise might suffer this possible limitation. I know I'm not alone; i've mentioned before numerous times that John Milton and the Church Father Tertullian, among others being in the same camp as I.


That is a very interesting position. It is unfortunately not a question I am qualified to speak with much authority on and therefore by opinion can only be very limited.

annatar1914 wrote:I then have little use for Idealism even though I tried with tremendous amounts of reading Kant and Hegel and Liebniz and Berkeley to come to that point of view, feeling that it would make things easier for me theologically. But it hasn't one bit. The real world remains the real world, and the only one which is, excepting that God in His Heaven is very Great indeed, and so we in our fallen state cannot see everything that is material and everything that is real. That when the Fathers and Saints describe beings of ''Spirit'', or the ''invisible and bodiless Hosts'', they are speaking of beings which are just ordinarily imperceptible and which can take whatever form in reality they need or desire to take, unlike us in the world we know of. We only take on those ''spiritual'' forms when we die.And in Christian belief, it still seems necessary that with the Resurrection, we will all receive our bodies back, the same bodies, but glorified.


What is the position of the Orthodox Church on this question?

annatar1914 wrote:Idealism obviously lends itself to a very different worldview, that is against Communism as a modern ideology and all forms of materialism, but I cannot embrace it even if it has been a ''traditional'' element of Philosophy since Plato on. An Idealist posits (but cannot see or feel!) another order of Being which properly speaking only belongs to God Himself, and applies it to, or against, reality, creating a dualism which quite literally does not exist.


My concern with materialism as opposed to Idealism is that materialism is largely empirical. Materialists do not believe in what they cannot see or feel. And I think that the notion of having to prove the existence of God is a type of non-belief. Atheists always tell us that we must prove God's existence to them. But I think it is not possible, you cannot do so using material means. Of course this is not what you are saying but once we enter onto the materialist path it can lead to such thinking. But again my level of knowledge about this subject is very limited. You know far more than me.

annatar1914 wrote:So I'm discovering another irony; that in my traditionalism, my Ancient Christian Orthodoxy, I have been more perhaps crudely physical and material in my belief than most intellectuals that have lived for at least the past 1000 years or so. So, I'm still the ''odd man out'', and such was not my intention...


Perhaps my position is too Manichaen?

Victoribus Spolia wrote:You cannot derive liberalism and unregulated markets, by way of analogy no less, form illiberalism and regulated markets. :roll:


I do not see why not. If one trajectory is having an influene on society (in this case somewhat deregulated markets) then surely having them completely deregulated with absolutely no regulation at all will produce the same but more?

Victoribus Spolia wrote:Even if such is artificial only because the state is making them or paying them? :eh:


The system a country operates under will not influence the cultural trajectory in anything but a superficial way. Whether it is communism, anarcho capitalism or fascism the values of the population will exist independently of the state unless the state works to change culture. Anarcho capitalism you speak of could go in any direction. It will allow people to be even more liberal to push boundaries even further.

In the Soviet Union they were able to change culture through top down directives and cultural work.

Under liberal democratic capitalism the changes have been initiated through pressure groups and campaigns. Already this was possible under the freedoms we have today and you want to push this further and give everyone complete freedom, anarchism.

How will this suddenly produce a return to old ways? It will just be worse.

Victoribus Spolia wrote:Except it has, medieval Europe closely approximated what an AnCap world would look like, even its monarchies were just barely incompatible with AnCaps, but not by much due to their minarchist character.


I am sorry, this is not correct. In the Middle Ages social codes were written into law. It was nothing like liberalism or complete freedom. A person was tied to their lord, the church, their land and the monarch.

Victoribus Spolia wrote:Indeed, the longest stretch of religiosity and traditionalism that has ever existed in the west or any civilization for that matter, have generally existed under feudalism/Ancap conditions or minarchist monarchies.


But those monarchies did not give peope the freedom to do what they wanted. You could not advocate ideas freely under that system. Anarcho Capitalism makes it possible.

Victoribus Spolia wrote:Actually, they have no choice. There is no affirmative action, transgenderism, and feminism when there is no state, there is only people in a state of nature:


Perhaps not affirmative action but there would still be transgenderism and feminism. It would all exist it would just not be legally protected or enforced.

Just because it is not enforced by the government does not mean people would not drift to those tendencies. What is to say it would be a traditional idyllic situation and not a drug filled ultra-individualistic and materialistic sort of society? Everyone becomes a survivalist yes but is there guarantee they would become traditional people? It is doubtful.

And you have not addressed what happens to the weaker members of society who cannot survive under such a system.
#14943247
Political Interest wrote:I do not see why not. If one trajectory is having an influene on society (in this case somewhat deregulated markets) then surely having them completely deregulated with absolutely no regulation at all will produce the same but more?


No, I would say the opposite. I could make a very good case that consumerism, massive corporations, and all manner of decadence would not be possible under stateless conditions.

Political Interest wrote:Anarcho capitalism you speak of could go in any direction. It will allow people to be even more liberal to push boundaries even further.


Nature is a constraint, which is what you are missing in a critique of Anarcho-Capitalism.

feminism and transgenderism do not thrive and cannot thrive under stateless conditions because such lifestyles do not aid in survival and the transfer of land.

AnCaps advocate for the natural order being permitted to play out, homosexuals cannot produce heirs to tend their lands and to pass on property and they tend to die out, under AnCap conditions people can discriminate against such deviants and often form private communities that forbid their existence.

The only reason that does not happen under liberal democracies is because democracies MUST enfranchise as many people as possible to grow the state's power. All social contracts tend towards communism for this reason, its the expansion of public control.

Political Interest wrote: Already this was possible under the freedoms we have today and you want to push this further and give everyone complete freedom, anarchism.


This is false, the reason people are "free" to pursue decadence is because its protected and even funded by the state. Single motherhood for example, when and why did it become endemic? It did so once the state subsidized it with welfare. The father was replaced by the state. In Ancap conditions, single-motherhood is a veritable death sentence, and so, marriage would be ubiquitous. This is a praxeologically predictable result.

Political Interest wrote:How will this suddenly produce a return to old ways? It will just be worse.


This assumes that all lifestyles are equally viable in a state of nature, when only traditional ones are. The ONLY reason egalitarianism can thrive is because the state protects it and funds it. There is no egalitarianism in nature, only traditionalism. This is the point.

Political Interest wrote:I am sorry, this is not correct. In the Middle Ages social codes were written into law. It was nothing like liberalism or complete freedom. A person was tied to their lord, the church, their land and the monarch.


You misunderstand, the medieval ages has a plethora of privately retained duchies, fiefdoms, independent manors, etc., that subscribed to canon law and their own laws on their own property.

For instance, I am a Theonomist (basically the Christian version of Sharia) and such would be enforced in towns that covenant together on private property and in fealty to the Lord of the Manor.

Likewise, the minarchist monarchies of the middle-ages (which are my second favorite form of social order and closest to AnCap conditions) has a small government in the hands of a private family, and it all privately owned. A King in Baden did not have the resources or the need to police child-rearing in the Black Forest. The natural conditions of life without oversight and subsidy are what perpetuated traditionalism outside of his direct control.

Living under a minarchist monarch was closer to living without a state than anything we can currently comprehend.

But beyond this, large swaths of both Feudal Japan and Medieval Europe were NOT under monarchs, many were under independent lords, which is exactly what anarcho-capitalism implies. Patriarchy and Fecudnity were matters of the natural order playing itself out. Likewise, such values were reinforced by traditions and especially the church, which keep in mind, was able to exert substantial influence and power without having to be a state over these peoples (a third-party monopolist of coercion), which was similar to the influence of the Japanese Emperor in the feudal era, he was ultimately symbolic, but revered with great zeal in a manner commensurate to the Latin pope. (such a system might be called Anarcho-Monarchism, which I include as variant of my own position).

Political Interest wrote:But those monarchies did not give peope the freedom to do what they wanted.


Sure, but I don't believe in absolute freedom of speech or lawlessness.

That you are ignorant of my position is the issue here.

I am only for absolute free-speech inasmuch as I oppose a state controlling private agents; however, if I want to kill people who live on my property for heresy as the terms of a covenant I have made with them voluntarily, that is and should be my natural right (besides the fact that God commands it).

Monarchs privately owned the state and continued to enforce the same canon-law that any faithful catholic landowner would on his own land over his own peasants. The entire feudal order is as close to my ideal social-order as you can imagine. It was a state of private-property absolutism.

Political Interest wrote:Perhaps not affirmative action but there would still be transgenderism and feminism.


Feminism cannot exist without a state, because women cannot overcome and surpass men in nature, they would be subjugated to their rightful place.

Every feminist political accomplishment, EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. required a state to accomplish such ends and none of these accomplishments existed de facto under conditions of a smaller state or no state.

So don't be silly.

Political Interest wrote:Just because it is not enforced by the government does not mean people would not drift to those tendencies.


If they did, they would quickly die or fail. That is the point, degeneracy requires state protection to perpetuate. Its unnatural and abominable.

For instance, if there were not a state, drug addition would not be a problem. Why?

Because addicts would be dead, not protected and paid for. If you don't work, you don't eat.

Only the affluent would ever entertain such "habits."

Political Interest wrote:And you have not addressed what happens to the weaker members of society who cannot survive under such a system.


The same thing that happens without a welfare state: the family and the church.

For instance, as a Christian, I actually oppose social security because Christ our Lord upheld the responsibility of the First Born to care for his parents in their old age in exchange for the double-portion of their inheritance. St. Paul likewise commands the family to take-care of the widows and only secondarily is the Church to do so. This is NOT the responsibility of a state. The Prophet Samuel even warns against kings and states, so why should we unequivocally embrace them? Sure, we as Christians are to be obedient to the state and are not forbidden from participation, and both kings and emperors are called to submit to Christ The King, but is that state-itself the ideal form according the Holy Scriptures? Absolutely not.

Free patriarchies (anarcho-capitalism) are this ideal, as it was under the time of the Judges and prior to the time that God instituted such under Adam and then the Patriarchs.

So.....what about the weak?

The weaker are the responsibility of Christian families and the church. That is what our Lord commands.

But those who refuse to work, refuse to do what is right. Let them not eat. Their own destruction is just.
Last edited by Victoribus Spolia on 29 Aug 2018 23:26, edited 1 time in total.
#14943339
PI, you said in reply;

And the respect is definitely mutual. I always like reading your posts.


Thank you, our conversation over the years has been a model of cordiality that I think others might gain by some slight emulation of it, lol.



I think that what the Marxists did not understand was that people need some type of tradition and even a socialist country needs some basis in cohesion. If all institutions are deconstructed and abandoned the result will not be socialism but instead anarchy. The Chinese went very far in this direction, much more than the Soviets when they launched the Cultural Revolution. There was almost nothing gained from that period of Chinese history and the 1960s are thought of as something of a lost decade there. Anglo-Marxists have embraced similar notions of patriarchy and race privilege which if realised to their full extent will not produce a cohesive or stable socialist state. I do not think it is possible to have open door immigration, absolutely no gender roles and the institutionalisation of family life while also maintaining a stable socialist society for the proletariat to live well in.


Very true. If we can allow the possibility that the Marxist critique of Capitalism is correct, it does not follow that we should embrace their economic and atheist/materialist reductionism that they carry with it.



I would say I am as well. The state can be used for any purpose. If it is in good hands it can be used to undertake projects to uplift human beings. Perhaps I am too idealistic but if there are intelligent and good men in charge there is nothing wrong with a large state. And even under the most liberal government it is still not possible to exist without a state. Democracy itself ends where the interests of the men who run the state end.


The State is of course geared towards the ends of power, power of whoever the ruling elite is composed of. But for me, I feel that since the leaven of Christianity has indeed penetrated society, we have had an opportunity to fulfill the Greco-Roman political ideal, that of the rule of the common good and public trust over private interest and the rule of an elite that govern by virtue of advantages of private birth and/or wealth.



I'm by no means dogmatic about economic questions. And would you also agree that in order for there to be this natural evolution into a new system of production economic dogmatism must be avoided?


Marx and Engels and the others saw themselves as Scientists of a new sort, but scientists nonetheless. Any true science is provisional in it's findings and necessarily cannot be ''dogmatic''. But human beings crave certainties and the language of the Marxists easily lends itself to dogmatic sectarianism.


That is a very interesting position. It is unfortunately not a question I am qualified to speak with much authority on and therefore by opinion can only be very limited.



What is the position of the Orthodox Church on this question?



My understanding as I grow in my Orthodox faith is that Dogmas primarily relate to Trinitarian and Christological theology, and incidentally to other things in descending order of relation. What I do know from the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the Symbol of the Christian Faith, is that God the Father is the ''Creator of Heaven and of Earth, of all things seen and unseen''. To me then that appears to say that all things are of some substantial form, even if we cannot perceive or even describe such Matter intelligibly in all cases.



My concern with materialism as opposed to Idealism is that materialism is largely empirical. Materialists do not believe in what they cannot see or feel.


I am something of an empiricist and sensist myself, and my problem with the atheist materialists in that regard is that, frankly, we do not understand or have quite misinterpreted a great deal of what we think we ''know'' from our senses. They expect with some reason that every Christian is coming at them from an Idealist perspective, and so they automatically make these Cartesian distinctions as we modern men always do, such has been the influence of Rene Decartes.


And I think that the notion of having to prove the existence of God is a type of non-belief. Atheists always tell us that we must prove God's existence to them. But I think it is not possible, you cannot do so using material means. Of course this is not what you are saying but once we enter onto the materialist path it can lead to such thinking. But again my level of knowledge about this subject is very limited. You know far more than me.


My thinking is very direct and is (due to the influence of Blaise Pascal and the Jansenists) the following; one cannot know God unless one has through His graces been prepared to know Him. The whole Cosmos is infused with His Energies, His active superabundant life, and from these material things so ordered and pervaded by God we can infer a ''god of the philosophers and savants'', but not the ''God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob'' of Holy Scripture. He is known by personal experience alone.

It's the only way you can ''prove'' Him, your own encounter in person.



Perhaps my position is too Manichaen?


I think not, at least not on a conscious level, but I suspect we all have been influenced by errant Dualism to one degree or other. But Monism as you suggest has it's own dangers, Pantheism among other pitfalls.
#14943379
And so, after this last exchange of views, from my friends Potemkin, Victoribus Spolia, Political Interest, and myself as the least of this worthy and- without irony-noble band, I clarify and condense before jumping further into this excursion of a thread;

Synthesis is something I aim at, contraries and ''antithetical'' positions I try to resolve no matter how curious my stages of attempted resolution appear to others. Dualism is too much for me. But...

Anarcho-Capitalism and Communism are absolutely poles apart in almost every way I can think of. Both are revolutionary, and both are what the divisions of ''Left'' and ''Right'' are resolving themselves into... This is what I see; a Thesis namely called Marxism growing by stages into Leninism and then Stalinism, calling forth an Antithesis in this same period called Fascism, growing and adapting by stages into Objectivism/Libertarianism (read your von Mises and Hayek in that context as well as Rand and Rothbard!) and finally Anarcho-Capitalism as the full flowering of the genuine Capitalist response to the genuine Leftist critique. It could only have arisen with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Fukayama's ''End of History and the Last Man'' is it's unconscious portent, the canary in the coalmine.

These two are the immediate future; their combat. It will take time to see it for what it is. And mind you, there is nobility and humanity on both sides, I feel. Let's discuss, without communist versus anti-communist hysterics, and then I will move on to other aspects of my philosophical problem.

The somewhat Marxian framed question I have which is probably not immediately obvious is this; if the State is to whither away, in communism, will there not also be a dialectical ''shadow'' of that spiraling movement, within Capitalism itself in it's latest and last stage? If Capitalism as we've generally come to understand it jettisons the State as it's instrument of ''oppression of the working classes'', does that ''oppression'' cease or does it enter it's most intense period without the restraint of Law at all?

And a question directed more towards Anarcho-Capitalists and their Libertarian and Objectivist fellow travellers is this; from your perspective, what are the transition phases of a cycle which ends with Anarcho-Capitalism? Is the State indeed Socialist/Communist from this perspective, by it's very nature?

I have my own thoughts on these questions, but again, my answers present problems of their own that I feel there needs to be more opinions than my own expressed regarding this.
#14943430
annatar1914 wrote:And a question directed more towards Anarcho-Capitalists and their Libertarian and Objectivist fellow travellers is this; from your perspective, what are the transition phases of a cycle which ends with Anarcho-Capitalism? Is the State indeed Socialist/Communist from this perspective, by it's very nature?


Certain states trend towards communism by praxeological necessity as an inevitable end (unless they crash or are conquered prior to their fulfillment). These states are social contracts; usually starting as liberal democracies like the U.S. and many others, but they will continue to expand public ownership, the welfare state, demographic enfranchisement, the military, and spending. They must, its inevitable.

This same praxeological constraint is not the same with monarchies because they are privately owned and if a private family is liable for its debts and has a reign that is predicated on some concept of property rights, a king is not going to expand his government arbitrarily, it would be too much of a liability to his own family and wealth. Representatives in a republic don't give a shit because the money they are spending is not theirs.

The fall of the state will come when insolvency, conflict, popular resentment, and some other resource crisis meet at a head. If Spengler is correct, demographic change and decadence would be major contributors as well and some sort of Caesar figure may take the reigns of the state before it can turn to communism. The Caesar will implement a conservative government, a fascist-esque imperial dictatorship over a super-state; however, such a state will still become insolvent and the traditionalism enforced will be artificial and temporary, Spengler admits this.

Caesarism is the last stage and it collapses.

Whats comes out of this is a new order which is basically feudalism or anarcho-capitalism just as Europe was post-Roman collapse.

I would also like to point out that you understanding of idealism is grossly misrepresentative and I think your materialistic monism is concerning.

I know you appeal to Tertullian and Milton, but neither of them are examples I would brag about either in theological circles. Tertullian was never canonized because of his ties to Montanism and Milton was of the broad puritan tradition which had many of its own problems as I am sure you would agree.
#14943452
Victoribus Spolia wrote:The fall of the state will come when insolvency, conflict, popular resentment, and some other resource crisis meet at a head.


Democracy falls at that stage.

If Spengler is correct, demographic change and decadence would be major contributors as well and some sort of Caesar figure may take the reigns of the state before it can turn to communism.


Spengler--or the biological analogy, a culture inevitably ages like an organism--is hardly considered credible. But Caesarism is a likely outcome if/when the failings of democracy become unbearable.

The Caesar will implement a conservative government, a fascist-esque imperial dictatorship over a super-state; however, such a state will still become insolvent and the traditionalism enforced will be artificial and temporary, Spengler admits this.


Caesarism isn't very conservative. The Caesars gradually eliminated a long republican tradition, and the nazis had no real use for traditionalism, notably aristocracy and christianity. Insolvency had little to do with the fall of either.

Caesarism is the last stage and it collapses.


I don't think that's inevitable.
#14943458
starman2003 wrote:I don't think that's inevitable.


The collapse or Caesarism?

starman2003 wrote: Insolvency had little to do with the fall of either.


Thats simply not true. The Roman empire had problems on every front; politically, religiously, economically, demographically, et al.

starman2003 wrote:But Caesarism is a likely outcome if/when the failings of democracy become unbearable.


I agree its quite possible, as I had stated.

starman2003 wrote:Democracy falls at that stage.


We'll see, I can't preclude the possibility of Democracy collapsing before a totalitarian (caesarian) takeover.

I would probably prefer it in all actuality. I would prefer to get the pain over and to return to the natural state without prolonging it with a conservative dictator.

The sooner the collapse, the better.
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