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.