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.
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