This is a section from the great fiction Property, Economy,
Society, and the Politics of Decline by Hans Hermann Hapa.
I want to shed light on the principal strategy that all
statists from the late Middle Ages on until today have pursued
to reach their statist ends, so as to also gain, if only
indirectly, some insight into any possible counter strategy
that could lead us out of the current predicament.
Not back to the Middle Ages, of course, because too many
permanent and irreversible changes have taken place since,
both in regard to our mental and our material conditions and
capacities, but to a new society that takes its cues from the
study of the Middle Ages and understands and knows of the
principal reason for its demise. The strategy was dictated by the
quasi libertarian, stateless medieval starting point, and it
suggested itself naturally first and foremost to the top ranks of
social authority, in particular to feudal kings.
In a nutshell, it boils down to this rule.
Instead of remaining a mere Primus inter Paris, you must
become Solas Primus. And to do this you must
undermine, weaken, and ultimately eliminate all
competing authorities and hierarchies of social authority.
Beginning at the highest level of authority with your most
immediate competitors, and from there on down ultimately to the
most elementary and decentralized level of social
authority invested in the heads of individual family households.
You, every statist, must use your own initial authority to
undermine each and every rival authority and strip away its
right to independently judge, discriminate, sentence, and
punish within its own territorial, limited realm of
authority. Kings other than you must no
longer be allowed to freely determine who is another or the
next king, who is to be included or excluded from the rank of
kings, or who may come before them for justice and assistance,
and likewise for all other levels of social authority.
For noble Lords and vassals, as well as separate local
communities, orders, associations, and ultimately all
individual family households, no one must be free to autonomously
determine his own rules of admission and exclusion.
That is, to determine who was supposed to be in or out, The
conduct to expect of those who are in and want to remain in
good standing, and what member conduct instead of results in
various sanctions ranging from disapproval, censure, and fines
to expulsion and corporal punishment.
And how to accomplish this and centralized and consolidate all
authority in the hands of a single territorial monopolist?
First, an absolute monarch, and subsequently a democratic state.
By enlisting the support of everyone resentful of not being
included or promoted in some particular Community Association
or social rank, or of being expelled from them and unfairly
punished against this unfair discrimination, you, the State
or would be state promise to get the excluded victims in and help
them get a fair and non discriminating treatment in
return for their binding commitment to and affiliation
with you on every level of social authority.
Whenever and wherever the opportunity arises, you
encourage and promote deviant behavior and deviance, and
enlist their support in order to expand and strengthen your own
authority at the expense of all others.
Accordingly. The principal counter strategy
of re civilization, then, must be a return to normality by
means of decentralization. The process of territorial
expansion that went hand in hand with the centralization of all
authority in one monopolistic hand must be reversed.
Each and every secessionist tendency and movement, then,
should be supported and promoted, because with every
territorial separation from the central state, another separate
and rival center of authority and adjudication is created.
And the same tendency should be promoted within the framework of
any newly created, separate and independent territory and center
of authority. That is, any voluntary
membership, organization, association, order, club, or
even household within the new territory should be free to
independently determine its own house rules, IE, its rules of
inclusion, of sanctions and of exclusion, so as to successfully
replace the current status system of forced territorial and
legal integration and uniformation with a natural
quasi organic social order of voluntary, territorial, and
legal customary association and disassociation.
Moreover, as an important addition, in order to safeguard
this order of increasingly decentralized centers, ranks and
hierarchies of natural social authority from internal
corruption or external foreign attack, each newly reemerging
social authority should be encouraged to build as wide as
possible a network with similarly placed and like minded
authorities in other foreign territories and jurisdictions
for the purpose of mutual assistance in case of need.
Thank you for watching Keith and I don't tread on anyone in the
Libertarian Institute.