Folk Feudalism
A libertarianism for the 21st century.
The last decade of American political history has been unkind to libertarianism. In every direction it finds its core principles repudiated. Its free market ethos is beaten back on its left by welfare statism and on its right by renewed protectionism. Its social ideals, long taken as granted, are being met with backlash. Roe v. Wade is overturned. Transgender rights have hit a ceiling. Immigration laws are actually being enforced. And the Sexual Revolution is more broadly regarded with angst.
At the same time, disfavor in the general has not prevented its exploitation in the particular. Trump’s exorbitant tariffs against one half the world and his waging war against the other is countered by one of the most aggressive emaciations of federal bureaucracy and government services since they’ve been expanded in the first place. While liberals adopt concepts like the “nanny state” in their local conflicts with parents over library inventories and school curricula. Libertarianism, in other words, provides helpful cudgels in ongoing disputes between the relevant factions, from which libertarianism itself is excluded.
It’s difficult to look back on the “libertarian moment” of the early-2010s and regard it as something other than a dream. And not just a dream, but one heavily accented by nocturnal indigestion. It was a moment when Ron Paul was looked on by normal people (like my dad and one of my brothers) as an elder statesman of high principle, if not a serious contender for high office. The New York Times magazine dedicated 5,000 words to mark its burgeoning appeal among the youth, including a punk show flyer design aesthetic that was curious to me, as most of the libertarians I knew at the time (excepting Lucy Steigerwald, whom I’ve not spoken to in years) did not listen to music.
Yet there was always a sarcastic edge to the endeavor, as if the true purpose was for the Democratic Party, then at the height of its confidence, to set the bounds of an opposition it could actually tolerate. There was no way the right would abide by that. Instead it gave up on the mainstream, went further off the intellectual beaten path than anyone expected, and reconciled itself with America’s natural crassness. As the “new right” ascended, libertarianism was castigated as a collaborator ideology. Though the more significant consequence is that freedom as an end in itself no longer has a serious advocate. In most cases, in fact, freedom is an impediment to the current set of desired ends which, on a good day, is nothing more than victory.
Both sides are in error. The anti-libertarians wrongly assume their total victory and the enduring value of freedom as a weapon of convenience; or for that matter, that any freedom-centric ideology they render obsolete is bound to stay that way. For their part, the libertarians err in thinking that, when libertarianism finally prevails under more ideal conditions, it will be their version that does so. That is, their conception of freedom not only as total, but as something to be pursued as its own good. Assuming libertarianism continues to adhere to its 20th century mentality, which cannot maneuver very far into the 21st century, where freedom will flourish once it readapts to its environment.
Where once it was customary to see freedom as an absolute principle, in the pursuit of which we unlocked a better society, it becomes in our present context an absolute condition, in which we are the objects pursued. Freedom works its force upon us. Where it takes us depends upon its direction.
Sometimes freedom pushes you out. If the present community causes you only disgust and boredom, you will marshal your resources to go in search of a new one. This is fairly recognizable already, but the 21st century may see it spread with more acute desperation and a greater variety. And its dynamics will be more complicated than standard libertarian nostrums allow. Freedom compels you from one situation to another, the acclimation to the new situation depends solely upon you. Think of Frank Cotton in Hellraiser. Finding no satisfaction with Earthly pleasures, he seeks extra-dimensional extremes. He unlocks it with a puzzle box which brings him to the Cenobites who give him pretty much what he wants. The Cenobites know and respect their dimension’s rules, so when Frank breaks them by returning to the human realm and causing havoc, they must enforce them without compromise, with an irony that I’m guessing is pretty typical in most sadomasochistic arrangements. Freedom is the last refuge of the seeker. If you can comply with it.
Freedom may also pull you down. You don’t leave the community, but rather the community shuns you. It deprives you of the comforts and amenities that come with membership, yet at the same time unburdening you of their maintenance demands and standards of conformity. If you do not want to mend the breach you are then left to your own devices. You develop your own amenities and set your own boundaries. For instance, you are apt to think that Leatherface was not in the right to attack and refrigerate those young attractive road-trippers in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Perhaps if Leatherface had lured them to his property and if they had not been warned multiple times by another character not to go in that direction, you’d be right. But clearly Leatherface was in a defensive posture against well-meaning but obvious trespassers. And having trespassed, they forfeited their autonomy, bodily or otherwise, to the rules set by Leatherface and his family. Freedom is the last resort of the failure. If you can protect it.
These divergent freedoms function on different scopes and attract different personalities. The pushing freedom is very A- and B-type; the pulling freedom obviously very C- and D-type. Yet they share the same jealousy for order, being sensitive to their condition as islands in an ocean of lawlessness. What occurs on these islands is of no concern to anyone not already inhabiting them. And no inhabitant concerns themselves with any exterior rights of or obligations. This expanse of compounds and estates is fed by the hard-edged strains of libertarianism. The aristocratic gloom of Albert Jay Nock, the anti-democratic atomization of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and the rights-skeptical egoism of L.A. Rollins. Taken together, this disordered order may go further afield of what is typically libertarian, and so it merits the more accurate descriptor of folk feudalism.
Libertarianism at its most hopeful was always journey-oriented. It prized the experiential over the substantial, mere sight over deeper understanding. The road was always open; the borders had no walls. Cultures presented themselves in pristine but lifeless fashion, like museum tableaux. Acculturation being at best a distraction from unfettered freedom, to be pursued as endlessly as the roads. I would say that this ethos was born out of respectable outlets like Reason magazine and the Cato Institute, but its most obvious avatar was Anthony Bourdain, the rootless gentleman par excellence. It was an attitude wholly reliant on a normalized global perspective, protected by universally recognized rules, a kind of political insurance.
But roads do not really go on. They may circle back to their starting point. Or they may give out entirely. The 21st century libertarianism is looking for a destination. It wants to find a place and to stay there. To navigate this terrain under the earlier conception of freedom is to expose yourself to a new set of dangers. You will be without a map, and without political insurance. The ruggedness of the physical terrain does not compare to that of the social. Your acceptance in one community or estate will vary wildly, often to the point of total reversal, from all the others. That is granting that any kind of temporary acceptance, like political Airbnbs, is allowed, which is doubtful without preconditions. The universal rules being of no currency, and the global perspective of no interest, the itinerant non-citizen is burdened to dwell on the ironies of folk feudalism. The global experience junkie, attached to no one and habitually curious, finds himself closed off from the world. The problem of injustice, unsolvable within any 20th century political philosophy, finds its solution in the denial of justice.