On Libertarianism
Lacking the People Power for Real Resistance
This decade kicked off with a series of major protests in the capitals of the West, in response to the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. From Ottawa to Amsterdam, both on the Left and Right, these protests took the form of Libertarianism. With the masses awakening to the system as a whole, it is critical for us to assess whether this trending approach will be up for the task ahead in building enduring resistance and long-term success for the people.
We must clearly state that Libertarianism — while many of the ideology’s adherents are well-meaning people — is not an effective ideology in forming the basis of Republicanism. The focus on individual liberties and freedoms sounds great in isolation, but the ideology is unable to go deeper in addressing the complexities of geopolitics, flattening contradictions when taken in the context of the era of the rising multipolar world combatting the unipolar hegemony of Global Finance.
The “anti-authoritarian” rhetoric of Libertarianism, again sounding noble, actually mirrors much of the same talking points from the Western Imperialist media when describing resistance states who stand up to the “rules-based international order.” When these pundits refer to resistance states as “authoritarian,” they are obscuring the fact that all governments are indeed “authoritarian,” the question is for who’s authority?
Being situated in the Imperial Core can make it hard to see the forest from the trees. It makes sense that an ideology like Libertarianism would crystalize here where the governments are controlled directly by Global Finance. As a result, Libertarians take the idea of “the government” and identify this abstraction of “the state” as the main issue facing society without its given societal context of who the state serves. We will elaborate throughout this piece on why a people’s state is necessary for people’s power, but if you are a working class person or small business owner who subscribes to Libertarianism, you are correct in your intuition that you are indeed being held back by the current system of “Crony Capitalism.”
The private property rights cited in Libertarianism are rooted in the Enlightenment’s Classical Liberal ideals of Liberty, but in reality, these high-minded “human rights” apply exclusively to the Capitalist Class, not the everyday person. This is unattainable to the working class followers of the ideology today with the system having long since consolidated and reached the stage of Monopoly Capitalism.
Much like Left-Anarchists, many Right-Libertarians genuinely want to oppose Globalism, however, the ideology does not reinforce the people against Global Finance on a physical or spiritual level. Libertarianism follows a Satanic notion of “do as though wilt.” While freedom is something desirable, the freedom described by Libertarianism is fundamentally a negative freedom, it is the freedom from any reasonable constraints in society, best characterized in the works of the novelist Ayn Rand. These are the very same values, or lack-there-of, promoted by the Elites of Global Finance.
Both Globalism and Libertarianism share the same values, different only in a magnitude of scale, as both are rooted in Liberalism. Classical Liberalism has a direct throughline to today’s Progressive Liberalism. The ideological development of Liberalism followed the development of Capitalism, as Liberalism is the ideology of Capitalism, with the primitive accumulation of Capitalism begetting over time the Mega-Corporations which are a fixture of Monopoly Capitalism. This Monopoly Capitalism is the economic basis of Globalism.
In a popular YouTube animated film, ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: The Movie (2018), a dystopian world is depicted where conglomerates of mega-corporations have near total global dominance of markets, save for one. In this fictional scenario, North Korea or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is the last bastion of freedom left on the planet in upholding their nation’s sovereignty in the face of the relentless commodification of the Capitalist mode of production. With franchises in South Korea, MacDonalds invokes the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) — a Libertarian concept that the use of lethal force is justified when private property could be compromised — as grounds to invade the DPRK. This point on the NAP again shows how the logic of Libertarianism can be scaled up to justify the imperialist actions of Globalism or Monopoly Capitalism with its roots in Liberalism and the sanctity of private property for the Capitalist Class.
The movie is not that far from reality. It shows imperialism works in the real world with the desire to transform all nations in the world into captive markets. Substitute the choice of fast-food and entertainment companies such as MacDonalds, Burger King, and Disney; with the financial conglomerates of Black Rock, State Street, and Vanguard Group; and then add a few more resistance states that exist today, and you pretty much get the geopolitics of our world. The film’s irony is portraying the DRPK as the rebels as they are usually depicted as the “authoritarians” in Western Imperialist media, but this is not necessarily at odds with their other characterization of being called a “Rogue State.”
Libertarianism’s greatest fault is misunderstanding any power through the generic concept of “Anti-Statism,” at the Anarchist extremity of “anti-authoritarianism.” Government alone does not constitute an organism in and of itself, a state is a tool used by a specific class to achieve their interests. Capitalist states in the West, such as the Dominion of Canada, exist to mitigate the actions of the mega-corporations, guided by the larger conglomerates like Black Rock which are downstream of Global Finance. In contrast, people’s states are those who are vilified in Western Imperialist media because they stand sovereign in the face of this dominance. There is a reason why at Canadian Schools students are taught “Anti-Statist” books — such as Animal Farm or 1984 by the British author George Orwell or Lord of the Flies which paints a terrible view of human nature assuming all authority descends to totalitarianism or barbarism — which are meant to deter young people for aspiring to reach for people’s power, beyond a wage slave future of “individual freedom,” to participate in a collective project.
A people’s state is essential to resist the tentacles of Global Finance that are strangling the freedom of the weaker individual. Perhaps for a time, you can become a recluse, living remotely in a cabin in the woods, but eventually, the Empire’s frontier will reach you too. No amount of personal firearms stockpiled will stop the onslaught against you, the individual, from the Trans-Atlantic Axis when they turn inwards. A strong collective is what is needed to uphold Popular Sovereignty. We do not want to dictate to someone how to live their personal lives or attempt to confiscate their personal property. The role of a people’s state must be to provide for the core functions of society so that the people can live healthy and empowered lives, and be able to deal with their problems. What we do need is a robust public property with the infrastructure to deal with the challenges that face all of humanity.
The parameters of the fight today are not simply “government versus citizens,” but a worldwide battle of Global Finance versus the sovereign peoples of the world. We need a New Republic in the Spirit of the Honourable Louis Riel and the Original Resistance State of Manitoba!
Onwards to a Northern Continentalism!