The error of Paleolibertarianism

Paleolibertarians (e.g. Edward C. Feser, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, etc.) are famously close to reactionaries. However there is a big thing, the thing, that separates the two. The self-ownership axiom. A reactionary does not accept that one owns oneself simply because one may manifest causal control of one’s mechanical movement. That is obvious, for example, in case of a man in coma, or a man in some other way disabled. In this case paleolibertarians would provide the same answer as reactionaries. But that answer would not be based upon the libertarian theory, i.e. whence did the family get the right to decide the fate of that man if it does not own him (let’s suppose for the sake of argument that the person in question did not sign the contract to give someone control over himself in case of disability… maybe the person in question was born disabled)? As opposed to a libertarian who believes in the ownership of self, a reactionary is a communitarian. While I may own a certain share of myself, I do not fully own myself. Obviously, my parents who begot me own a fairly large share of myself, even though that, by the very nature of an act of the procreation, they have passed on to me a piece of their share of their ownership of self, so I own a bit of my parents. Reactionaries don’t like economic reductionism, so they don’t use the words such as ‘shares’ or ‘ownership’, but words like ‘duty’, and ‘obligations’. A reactionary recognizes a hierarchy of obligations: I owe most to my children and parents, then to my grandparents and grandchildren, then to my neighbors, then to the rest of my co-religionists, and so on… the farther one is removed from me, the less of me he owns.[1] Furthermore, libertarians are still pwned by egalitarianism, seeing how they don’t take into account unequal levels of agency that different individuals possess, and especially the fact that some groups (e.g. women, natural slaves, etc.) have very small amount of agency, and thus commonly need to be coerced for their own good.

Unlike today, Christianity back in the day affirmed one’s obligations to one’s nation, of course acknowledging the fact that God owns all:

Our parents and our country are the sources of our being and education. It is they that have given us birth and nurtured us in our infant years. Consequently, after his duties toward God, man owns most to his parents and his country. One’s duties towards one’s parents include one’s obligations towards relatives, because these latter have sprung [or are connected by ties of blood with] one’s parents… and the services due to one’s country have for their object all one’s fellow-countrymen and all the friends of one’s fatherland.[2]

–Thomas Aquinas

 

[…]obligations of piety extend in due proportion, directly or indirectly, to parents, relatives, fellow-countrymen, and to all persons closely connected with these. Hence, when Saint Paul says that in the Church ”there is neither Gentile nor Jew… Barbarian or Scythian, bond or free, but Christ, all in all’… he does not imply that the Church wishes to abolish or ignore the natural ties which bind individuals to their own country, no more than she would wish to abolish family ties or distinction of sex, or even reasonable distinctions of class, all of which are necessary for the good of the human race. He means rather, that just as the Church, while consecrating and upholding domestic ties and obligations, nevertheless, receives equally into her fold the members of every family, so also she receives and cherishes impartially the citizens of all nations, for all are equally dear to her Founder.

–Edward Cahill

 

The reason why I am not a libertarian is the same reason why I am not an absolutist. I am dumbfounded by absolutists who hate libertarians supposedly for libertarians‘ liberalism, when absolutists are even more liberal than libertarians. The starting point of absolutists has always been the idea of a unitary, all-powerful central government ruling over an undifferentiated aggregate of individuals, and which is legally and temporally prior and superior to all subsidiary associations. As far as absolutists are concerned, every competing center of authority – family, local community, and church is thus to be subordinated to the State.[3]

 

Footnotes

[1] Cicero: […]the union and fellowship of men will be best preserved if each receives from us the more kindness in proportion as he is more closely connected with us. The Holy Scripture: […]if any man have not care of his own, and especially of those of his house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel. Thomas Aquinas: […]people’s charitable activities towards one another are to be exercised in accordance with the varying nature of ties that unite them. For to each one must be given the service which belongs to the special nature of his connection with him that owes it.

[2] Keep in mind that Thomas Aquinas wrote in a very different time. One should not confuse the modern, post-Enlightenment notions of statehood and nationhood, with what he writes about.

[3] Similarly, I am not favorable to belligerent, Prussian forms of reaction, for Nothing has proved more destructive of kinship, religion, and local patriotisms that has war and the accompanying military mind. Prussia, it seems, was poisonous, a combination of the very worst aspects of Antiquity and Modernity both, and many of the Modernity’s ills were Prussian inventions. That’s not strange, however, for Prussia was, after all, like Protestantism, conceived in sin, founded by the fallen grandmaster of the Teutonic Order, honorless man who renegaded on his oaths and vows.