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What is Neoreaction: Ideology, Social-Historical Evolution, and the Phenomena of Civilization
An essay which delves into the conditions of ideology and civilization, with a focus on the neoreactionary movement in response to the failures of modernism.
- GenresNonfictionPolitics
100 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 29, 2013
About the author
Bryce Laliberte
4 books4 followersBryce Laliberte is a freelance writer. He has blogged since the age of 16, and now blogs at Anarcho-Papist, where you can read his thoughts on all issues associated with neoreaction. He has written a book, What is Neoreaction: Ideology, Social-Historical Evolution, and the Phenomena of Civilization.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 9, 2013
The first part on the ultimate motivation of the modern ideology is very good. Laliberte argues that all mainstream “ideologies” such as modern conservatism are fundamentally in agreement with the promotion of egalitarianism as their ultimate goal. This explains the failure of modern conservatism: it is fundamentally in agreement with its supposed “opponents”. They are all socialists now. Under democracy, egalitarian ideologies will tend to outcompete non-egalitarian ideologies: opponents of egalitarianism cannot be democrats.
Laliberte points out that egalitarianism and human flourishing are incompatible motivations. Though egalitarianism and survival could be combined in a single utility function (promote egalitarianism without decreasing the probability of survival too much), in practice the modern ideology doesn’t seem to think or care much about survival. I suppose the pursuit of any goal other than survival will probably decrease the probability of survival, but the pursuit of human flourishing does this less than egalitarianism. Anyway, the point is that egalitarianism is incompatible with human flourishing. It is anti-life, as Ayn Rand might have put it.
Within a democratic structure, egalitarian ideologies will tend to outcompete non-egalitarian ideologies, and eventually the whole structure will collapse. There is no feedback mechanism within the structure. It is a form of group selection -- but group selection can only lead to extinction, not improvement. Group selection is a group eliminating itself, rather than being outcompeted by another group. It does not lead to the improvement of the remaining groups. It is similar to anarcho-tyranny: the state will not enforce the law properly, but it prevents people enforcing it themselves. It prevents attempts at social organisation.
Laliberte gives a compelling new use of the word "biopolitics", by which means he something similar to "demography is destiny". He points out that the structure and culture of a society are largely dependent on its people. Arguments about politics are largely irrelevant: what matters is which groups have children and which don't. That will largely determine the politics of the future. Maybe so, but biopolitics is not everything. Cities reduce fertility -- this has long been known -- yet cities have been remarkably resilient, sustained by continuous immigration from the fertile outside.
The second part on social capital and nature is less good. On the surface it is convincing: Laliberte argues that the state creates uncertainty (“instability”) which reduces profitable exchanges of “social capital” just as it reduces the number of exchanges of real capital. However, I want all my economics to be in principle reducible to microeconomics. What exactly is “social capital”? Does it exist? James Goulding argued it better when he said that states tried and failed to centrally plan the economy; now they are trying to centrally plan society, and will fail (catastrophically). Laliberte is an Aristotelian/Thomist? and I found his arguments from nature lacked realism. They only confused this reader, with multiple distinctions between multiple definitions of “natural”. I want my arguments to be reducible to real things. Moldbug eschews Laliberte’s empty moralism, but Laliberte is a Catholic so clearly we disagree on what is real and what isn’t.
I also disagreed with Laliberte’s argument that a sufficiently advanced people will not need a state. That isn’t the point: states don’t exist *to* solve a problem, even if they do solve problems; they don’t exist because we need them. The state may disrupt the economy and society with its interventions, but it doesn’t have to. The potential for changes in state policy does create uncertainty, so the very existence of the state creates uncertainty, but a rational Moldbuggian state may choose not to intervene – just to sit in the corner and collect rents. Transaction taxes (income tax etc) and regulations distort the economy (sometimes in a good way); land taxes do not distort the economy. If a state has a history of non-intervention, and we have game-theoretic reasons to expect it to maintain this policy, then uncertainty is reduced.
Furthermore, law has always required the backing of coercion. Nick Szabo makes this very clear throughout his writings on the history of law, and his essay “The Coase Theorem is false” demonstrates how the state can reduce uncertainty on net. Laliberte would profit from Szabo’s writings against the concept of sovereignty, and Devin Finbarr on anarchy. In a sense, we are always in a state of anarchy, even if there is a state. A state is just an agent like any other. Finbarr points out that multiple states competing for territory is worse than one state occupying a territory uncontested. Multiple-state anarchy is undesirable. Laliberte's no-state anarchy is irrelevant, because regardless of whether there is a “state”, coercion will always be possible and there will always be rents. Someone will always create a state. Laliberte seems to mean that for a sufficiently “advanced” set of people, coercion will not be necessary, but that's not the point: it will always be possible, and there will always be rents, whether or not you call the rent collector a “state”.
I don’t think I got a great deal out of the book after that. I’m uninterested in feminism, so I’m probably modernist about it by default, and I found Laliberte’s take on feminism confusing. I would need someone to explain more clearly what the modernist and neoreactionary positions on feminism are. And the remainder of the book is a meander through a variety of subjects. There’s a nice section on the costs and benefits of integration, and against universalism (the idea that the same laws and structure of society is suitable for all peoples). But overall, as a neoreactionary, there wasn’t much new for me here. Perhaps it would be interesting to a non-neoreactionary, though it is probably too meta to be convincing or to hold a newcomer’s attention.
The flowery language is a little confusing now and then – the book would benefit by being edited for style. I can accept “to help us understand what is neoreaction” instead of “to help us understand what neoreaction is” as a nod to the title of the book, but “Required Catholics are to believe that a successful argument for God’s existence there must be” confusing like Yoda is.
At one point Laliberte equivocates between institutions and organisations, and his confusion of the terms leads to him making an unsound argument. Nonetheless, his insight that agents can only depend on agents with a lower time preference than themselves is a good one, similar to Moldbug's hierarchy of needs.
Hoppe's “Democracy: The God That Failed” should be viewed as a foundational text of neoreaction. Laliberte takes Hoppe's insight that lowering time-preference is indistinguishable from civilisation, and elevates it to a central point of neoreaction, which pervades Laliberte's book.
Laliberte's fundamental point, that the current ideology is unsustainable, is a good one. “From the reactionary perspective, modernism [egalitarianism] is not merely a mistake. It poses a fundamental threat to human flourishing.”
Laliberte points out that egalitarianism and human flourishing are incompatible motivations. Though egalitarianism and survival could be combined in a single utility function (promote egalitarianism without decreasing the probability of survival too much), in practice the modern ideology doesn’t seem to think or care much about survival. I suppose the pursuit of any goal other than survival will probably decrease the probability of survival, but the pursuit of human flourishing does this less than egalitarianism. Anyway, the point is that egalitarianism is incompatible with human flourishing. It is anti-life, as Ayn Rand might have put it.
Within a democratic structure, egalitarian ideologies will tend to outcompete non-egalitarian ideologies, and eventually the whole structure will collapse. There is no feedback mechanism within the structure. It is a form of group selection -- but group selection can only lead to extinction, not improvement. Group selection is a group eliminating itself, rather than being outcompeted by another group. It does not lead to the improvement of the remaining groups. It is similar to anarcho-tyranny: the state will not enforce the law properly, but it prevents people enforcing it themselves. It prevents attempts at social organisation.
Laliberte gives a compelling new use of the word "biopolitics", by which means he something similar to "demography is destiny". He points out that the structure and culture of a society are largely dependent on its people. Arguments about politics are largely irrelevant: what matters is which groups have children and which don't. That will largely determine the politics of the future. Maybe so, but biopolitics is not everything. Cities reduce fertility -- this has long been known -- yet cities have been remarkably resilient, sustained by continuous immigration from the fertile outside.
The second part on social capital and nature is less good. On the surface it is convincing: Laliberte argues that the state creates uncertainty (“instability”) which reduces profitable exchanges of “social capital” just as it reduces the number of exchanges of real capital. However, I want all my economics to be in principle reducible to microeconomics. What exactly is “social capital”? Does it exist? James Goulding argued it better when he said that states tried and failed to centrally plan the economy; now they are trying to centrally plan society, and will fail (catastrophically). Laliberte is an Aristotelian/Thomist? and I found his arguments from nature lacked realism. They only confused this reader, with multiple distinctions between multiple definitions of “natural”. I want my arguments to be reducible to real things. Moldbug eschews Laliberte’s empty moralism, but Laliberte is a Catholic so clearly we disagree on what is real and what isn’t.
I also disagreed with Laliberte’s argument that a sufficiently advanced people will not need a state. That isn’t the point: states don’t exist *to* solve a problem, even if they do solve problems; they don’t exist because we need them. The state may disrupt the economy and society with its interventions, but it doesn’t have to. The potential for changes in state policy does create uncertainty, so the very existence of the state creates uncertainty, but a rational Moldbuggian state may choose not to intervene – just to sit in the corner and collect rents. Transaction taxes (income tax etc) and regulations distort the economy (sometimes in a good way); land taxes do not distort the economy. If a state has a history of non-intervention, and we have game-theoretic reasons to expect it to maintain this policy, then uncertainty is reduced.
Furthermore, law has always required the backing of coercion. Nick Szabo makes this very clear throughout his writings on the history of law, and his essay “The Coase Theorem is false” demonstrates how the state can reduce uncertainty on net. Laliberte would profit from Szabo’s writings against the concept of sovereignty, and Devin Finbarr on anarchy. In a sense, we are always in a state of anarchy, even if there is a state. A state is just an agent like any other. Finbarr points out that multiple states competing for territory is worse than one state occupying a territory uncontested. Multiple-state anarchy is undesirable. Laliberte's no-state anarchy is irrelevant, because regardless of whether there is a “state”, coercion will always be possible and there will always be rents. Someone will always create a state. Laliberte seems to mean that for a sufficiently “advanced” set of people, coercion will not be necessary, but that's not the point: it will always be possible, and there will always be rents, whether or not you call the rent collector a “state”.
I don’t think I got a great deal out of the book after that. I’m uninterested in feminism, so I’m probably modernist about it by default, and I found Laliberte’s take on feminism confusing. I would need someone to explain more clearly what the modernist and neoreactionary positions on feminism are. And the remainder of the book is a meander through a variety of subjects. There’s a nice section on the costs and benefits of integration, and against universalism (the idea that the same laws and structure of society is suitable for all peoples). But overall, as a neoreactionary, there wasn’t much new for me here. Perhaps it would be interesting to a non-neoreactionary, though it is probably too meta to be convincing or to hold a newcomer’s attention.
The flowery language is a little confusing now and then – the book would benefit by being edited for style. I can accept “to help us understand what is neoreaction” instead of “to help us understand what neoreaction is” as a nod to the title of the book, but “Required Catholics are to believe that a successful argument for God’s existence there must be” confusing like Yoda is.
At one point Laliberte equivocates between institutions and organisations, and his confusion of the terms leads to him making an unsound argument. Nonetheless, his insight that agents can only depend on agents with a lower time preference than themselves is a good one, similar to Moldbug's hierarchy of needs.
Hoppe's “Democracy: The God That Failed” should be viewed as a foundational text of neoreaction. Laliberte takes Hoppe's insight that lowering time-preference is indistinguishable from civilisation, and elevates it to a central point of neoreaction, which pervades Laliberte's book.
Laliberte's fundamental point, that the current ideology is unsustainable, is a good one. “From the reactionary perspective, modernism [egalitarianism] is not merely a mistake. It poses a fundamental threat to human flourishing.”
February 14, 2014
I finished reading this e-book about a week ago. It is a commentary on the neoreaction movement, which is often described as a "libertarian heresy."
This book is extremely difficult to read because it is poorly written and uses overly technical language. It does, however, give some insight to the beliefs of neoreactionaries like Mencius Moldbug and Dark Enlightenment thinker, Nick Land.
Neoreactionaries bemoan the failure of libertarian thinking because it is based in the Enlightenment presupposition of equality. The author argues against democracy, equality, feminism, and liberalism.
In place of this are the ideas of hierarchy, patriarchy, and a Christian superstructure that superintends an organically organized society. Here, neoractionaries are more medieval in their thinking. Civilization survives due to common beliefs and a politic that supports the predominant framework and suppresses competing ideologies, but since society is organically organized around these common beliefs a coercive state is not necessary. I think Laliberte is off here. There is coercion no matter what political "ideology" is operative (and there is ALWAYS one operative). A prevailing orthodoxy always rules. For example, today's political correctness makes any remarks about the inequality of men and women, gay rights, and Christian morality taboo. Just say it and you can lose your job.
I see a possible connection among neoractionaries and economic distributists (e.g. The Distributist Review)who embrace Catholic Social Teaching. Additionally, harmony exists between neoractionaries and Red Tories like Philip Blond in the UK. While these are not mentioned in the book, there is somewhat of a convergence of thinking (at least along economic lines).
Finally, neoreactionaries have divergent views on many topics so this book cannot be interpreted as THE word on neoraction.
A short read on your Kindle, it's worth a look because it's only $3.00. But don't expect an easy or well-edited book.
This book is extremely difficult to read because it is poorly written and uses overly technical language. It does, however, give some insight to the beliefs of neoreactionaries like Mencius Moldbug and Dark Enlightenment thinker, Nick Land.
Neoreactionaries bemoan the failure of libertarian thinking because it is based in the Enlightenment presupposition of equality. The author argues against democracy, equality, feminism, and liberalism.
In place of this are the ideas of hierarchy, patriarchy, and a Christian superstructure that superintends an organically organized society. Here, neoractionaries are more medieval in their thinking. Civilization survives due to common beliefs and a politic that supports the predominant framework and suppresses competing ideologies, but since society is organically organized around these common beliefs a coercive state is not necessary. I think Laliberte is off here. There is coercion no matter what political "ideology" is operative (and there is ALWAYS one operative). A prevailing orthodoxy always rules. For example, today's political correctness makes any remarks about the inequality of men and women, gay rights, and Christian morality taboo. Just say it and you can lose your job.
I see a possible connection among neoractionaries and economic distributists (e.g. The Distributist Review)who embrace Catholic Social Teaching. Additionally, harmony exists between neoractionaries and Red Tories like Philip Blond in the UK. While these are not mentioned in the book, there is somewhat of a convergence of thinking (at least along economic lines).
Finally, neoreactionaries have divergent views on many topics so this book cannot be interpreted as THE word on neoraction.
A short read on your Kindle, it's worth a look because it's only $3.00. But don't expect an easy or well-edited book.
December 31, 2017
Not a super great read, not easily digestible. Probably better starting points for understanding this philosophy.
January 30, 2014
This serves as a fair introduction to "Dark Enlightment" ideology. I found it very persuasive in it's promotion of tradition, sociopolitical and religious hierarchy, Catholicism, patriarchy, monarchy and ethnic nationalism. Laliberte uses cold, rational logic to explain how progressive leftism, cultural Marxism, feminism, egalitarianism, protestant Lutheranism, equality, socialism and democracy are all rotten fruit of The Enlightenment (identified in this ideology as a turning point, the beginning of Western Civilization's decline).
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews