Every act that contributes to the human survival process. It is both a necessity and a desire: in order to survive we must eat and reproduce, but we can improve the conditions around it by making food that is more to our personal liking or make the reproductive process more pleasant and a social goal of personal desire. It’s a necessity that can be made desirable.

<eating, drinking, reproducing, working to make money,…

-         a necessity in daily life

-         the basis of every behavior, act and socialization

-         contained within the instincts of every living creature

-         experienced as self-evident and oblige

-         traditionally and rationally legitimized

-         essentially common (family, employer-employee, society,…)

Heroic ethos:

Every act that doesn’t contribute to the human survival process, but to the development of personality and ego. It is not a true necessity, but people develop it as soon as they have their productive ethos under control. It is a naturally human desire and therefore perceived to be a necessity. We can transform it later on in a productive ethos, by e.g. selling our artistic creations. It’s a desire that is oft portrayed as a logical act to perform.

<creating art, loving, cherishing, hating, competing, endeavoring ambition, desire,…

-         not a necessity in daily life

-         no basis of real surplus value

-         no causal derivative of behavior, act or socialization

-         result from the abundance of time à importance of time management

-         is perceived as “own contribution”, opposed to what is self-evident and oblige

-         legitimized through personal pleasure à importance of the self-image

-         essentially personal

Investment Theory

People use their time, talents and means to invest in either productive ethos or heroic ethos. From the moment man has reached a point of productive efficiency, he can invest his newly created time abundance in more labor ethos or in heroic ethos. This choice is relatively free, but not absolute. Our choices are made under influence of family, society, values, normative behavior, marketing, etc. The Investment Theory states that investing in one ethos implies a disinvestment in the other and this has its replications.

People choose their dominant ethos all the time and it is very variable. Sometimes these investments mean an improvement of the other ethos, sometimes they can diminish the other. Convergments imply a proportionate effect of one ethos on the other. They can be either interacting (both improve) or adversative (one improves and the other doesn’t, but the outcome is better). Conflicts imply a diminishing effect of one ethos on the other. They too can be either interacting  or adversative. The Investment Theory results in 8 possible scenario’s of choice we make on a daily basis. We use these 8 scenario’s or “choice scripts” to improve ourselves and our environment and form the basis of the free will and personal choice.

Choice scripts

Our choices are not made freely. Choices rely on investments in either productive or heroic ethos and can only result in a limitative selection of so-called choice scripts. These scripts are according to my Investment Theory limited to 8 possible scenario’s:

-         external value effect: investment in heroic ethos to increase personal production

                                               “I am confident, therefore I produce more and more efficiently.”

-         internal value effect: investment in labor ethos to increase the self-image

                                               “I am efficient and productive, therefore my self-confidence grows.”

-         questioning recoil: investment in heroic ethos to make productive changes

                                               “I will educate myself, so I’m able to improve my environment.”

-         demanding recoil: investment in labor ethos to make personal changes

                                      “I will become more productive, so I can benefit from more expensive choices.”

-         rebellion: investment in heroic ethos to make personal changes

                                              “I am self-confident, therefore I can revolt more easily.”

-         competition: investment in labor ethos to make productive changes

                             “I am efficient and productive, therefore I can become more productive and efficient.”

-         social decay: investment in heroic ethos to avoid collective impact on personal change

                                              “I am a strong personality, therefore I don’t need collective support.”

-         co-operational decay: investment in labor ethos to avoid collective impact on

                                            productive change

                                             “I am efficient and productive, therefore I don’t need collective support.”

Choice chains

These investments are mostly made consciously, therefore to some extent rationally. Although we don’t invest deliberately in either heroic or labor ethos, we definitely make choices based upon investments in time, talent and means. Taking your bike to the grocery store because gasoline has become too expensive is an investment in labor ethos (use your ability to drive a bike and your mean ‘a bike’) to make productive changes (invest less money and gasoline in the trip to the grocery’s), therefore the choice script ‘competition’. Because you make your possibilities to achieve your goal compete: taking your bike or taking your car. If you have spare time and you love to dance, you might join a dance group and perform for people who pay to see you. You invest your spare time and your desire to dance in perfecting your skills, so you will feel good and people will appreciate your talent. This is an example of ‘rebellion’, because you invest your abundance of time and your ambition to become a good dancer in order to change personally and be admired more intensely than when you wouldn’t be a good dancer.

Mostly, the choices you make can be easily classified in one of the eight choice scripts. But a lot of times these choices can be intertwined. The external value effect for example can lead to questioning recoil, when in your strife towards perfection you wish to adjust your environ-ment to become even more efficient and productive, which leads eventually to the uselessness of co-operation and support by others, being co-operational decay.

The internal value effect can lead to rebellion when we strife towards personal depth and a developed personality. Competition might lead to demanding or questioning recoil, etc.

Every choice we make, every choice script we follow, every investment we make, will inevitably lead to new choices and new choice scripts and new investments. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes automatically. Sometimes calculated and foreseen, sometimes not. We call this the choice chains. Because a choice never comes out of nothing and is never absolute. It has a cause, a purpose and an effect and cadres within a universal cohesion of choices, both personal and collective. Therefore, choices are not entirely free and well calculated.

Choice makers

Because the choices we make are essentially answers to problems and are therefore links between causes and effects, they are not freely made. Which doesn’t imply they’re not made rationally. If rational means agreeable to reason and based on good judgment, not all decisions we make are based upon it and therefore aren’t the result of the mere computer calculation that is the cost-benefit analysis. The computer computes its inserted problems on its own and uses programmed parameters to find the best solutions based on mathematical empiricism. The computer doesn’t take other computers into account and can not adjust its outcome to its liking, because it doesn’t have “a choice”. A man can listen to what his fellow man has to say, he can alter his behavior to the situation he’s involved in and rephrase both his problems and solutions to his liking. A rational choice is based on good judgment and is agreeable to reason. A human solution is based on personal judgment and agreeable to preference. A clear distinction must be made. People are free to make bad decisions: smokers smoke because they choose to, even though they know it’s killing them. Can this be considered a rational choice? Is this considered good judgment? It’s not. It is merely a personal judgment and has little to do with the subjective value of good and bad. Smokers don’t perceive smoking as good, while it is actually bad. They consider it as bad as a non-smoker does, but still they choose to smoke. This is not rational. This is essentially personal.

Neither are choices essentially personal and individual. Influence is not necessarily rational but plays an important role in our choice-making. Although choices are “made” on a personal level under personal responsibility, groups and institutions have more influence on our choices than ourselves. These are called the “choice makers”. Their aim is to profit from you personally and from your collective. They compete with each other, because they want complete dominance over your judgment. They make you invest in one of the ethos and make you pick a choice script. They invest in granting you benefits, both material and immaterial in order to posses your incentives.

There are 3 choice makers:

-         the state: the redistributor and peacekeeper

-         the society: sovereign owner of the collective labor force and peer pressure

-         the capital: sovereign owner of the production force and money distribution

The main objectives of the choice makers are simple: gain power and remain in power. To achieve these goals the choice makers must not only win the hearts of the individuals and their ethos, they must also compete with each other. This free competition guarantees its safety and reliability, just like a free market economy guarantees quality and reasonable prices. The objectives of the state are to gain as much profit as possible from both its legal subjects, foreign subjects and the local capital (including industries). Therefore it raises taxes and stimulates the economy to gain even more. In order to distribute the power over its accomplices and the collaborators it must provide enough incentives not to be put aside, like political power, social improvement, personal enrichment,…

The objectives of society are to preserve its homogeneous consistence, its predictability and its social influence it has on individuals who might rebel against. Therefore it imposes social control, morals, normative behavior and a social uniform.

The objectives of capital are to grow, find markets and distribute what they produce as efficiently as possible. Therefore it distributes high wages and low consumer prices, provides social mobility and uses marketing to guide choice-making.

a) the state uses: - democracy          - pluralism/universalism              à CLASS STRUGGLE

                             - socialism            - liberalism

b) society uses: – democracy          - nationalism                           à CLASS CONCILIATION

                          - solidarity            - religion/social organization

c) capital uses: – non governance     - regionalism                         à CLASS DESTRUCTION

                          - emancipation         - libertarianism

Ideology and the state

-         static democracy: by imposing the construction of the democratic system, the state has protected and ensured itself against rebellion and questioning recoil. Because the voluntary elements of society are put in charge of the executive and active governance of the state by the state, ultimate responsibility for communal care and social happiness lies with these willing elements, and not with the actual state and statesmen, who merely provide the institutional framework, the “set” of the farce that is democracy. So democracy can eventually be seen as a mean to protect the state against social or capital attacks.

-         Socialism: to prevent actions of society or capital against the static establishment to breach the state’s influence and power, the state claims the sovereign role of redistributor and peacekeeper. Socialism and Marxism offer the state the opportunity to prevent social stratification by raising taxes and redistributing the incomes. This is how the class struggle – which is merely a struggle between society and capital – is prostituted to promote a hostile social climate, an instable society and to prevent society and capital combining forces to breach the state’s power.

-         Pluralism/universalism: this is an effect of the liberalizing of the markets, the fading of national sovereignties and the migration waves. Migration means import of what I call “volksvreemde” elements: people, cultures and values that do not match those of the indigenous people, the ‘hosts’. They are aliens (vreemd) to the local people (volk). Migration hampers social cohesion, disables it to some extent and breaks national unity and therefore acts as a catalyzing element to invoke disunion. Migratory capital can also pose a threat to our local economy, which ought to be stable and self-governing. A stable and relatively limited market is to be preferred over an instable, elaborate and crisis-sensitive one. Foreign capital and funds intimidates our own domestic capital, that is forced to either remain on the level of local small enterprises, or either be swallowed and consumed by the foreign funds, and therefore has lost its self-governance and economic freedom. Free markets enslave local markets with the totalitarian chains of freedom. But what about justice for all? The communication between these corporate multinational islands locates itself on the level of international diplomacy and trade agreements, alongside states and state-groups. In this way, unified capital struggle against the state is neutralized, because it is dependent on the state to provide it with the international forum. And with that come the incentives the state offers to participating capitalists: tax benefits, prestige and the illusion of infinite global possibility. This results in the obvious choice of the capitalist to join op with the state and participate in his fowl and deceitful liberal scheme.

-         Liberalism: the liberalization of the labor markets and border fading

Ideology and society

-         ‘volks’-democracy:  through the construction of the ‘volks’-democracy (aka the direct democracy) the task of the government is reduced to a mere executing one. De true power of governance is no longer in the hands of the nation, but the community as a whole. The level in between that is the state, that divides the power from the people, is eliminated. Judicial power is withdrawn from the state’s sovereignty through the process of democratic elections of judges and standardizing the institute of the jury, already a standard in countries under Common Law.

-         Solidarity: is used to counter state’s pluralism and liberalization. Because these ideas result in social differentiation and social decay. The state uses liberalism and socialism to create leading and suppressed margins in society to keep both the liberal en socialist elites in power. What benefit do they have when everybody is content and there is no such thing as an oppressing and oppressed margin? Society therefore invests in the common sentiment of social unity and brotherhood. The false feeling of being irreplaceable and necessary towards each other and false social standards as family values and the cultivated conscience are a few examples of social uniformity that are trying to steer our minds and personal wills.

-         Nationalism: is a form of solidarity. It doesn’t only question and weaken the state’s plurality and liberalism, but also the phenomenon of border-fading, the multiculture and universality. Both the multiculture and universality are Enlightenment ideas. The American ideal of the “City Upon the Hill”, the world’s melting pot where everybody is free to live the life and pursuit his happiness in every way he or she wants. Nationalism, which is an unknown concept to American society, is used to create a false sense of ethnic or cultural unity. The purpose of this is not really to impose one dominant culture on the minorities, but to maintain and manage the different cultures in the best of possible ways, both the host cultures and the imported cultures. Note that strong communities can have a strong influence on a state and its governance and on the capital and its markets. The socialist policy of the states is being reformed towards a nationalist reflex to put the state and the capital, who are responsible of importing the new subjects, under pressure.

-         Religion: a last beacon of social unity to use against the social decay in order to legitimate society in a traditional way by investing in familiarity (recognizable aspect), social character and indigenous history, especially the moral social structure. Religion ant its associates create society’s opportunity to question both state and capital without the holy premise of individual ‘forging’ of the heroic ethos. Religion is after all based upon the immaterial reality and therefore implies a certain risk for the state and capital, both based upon the material reality.

Ideology and capital

-         non-governance: according to capital, every form of governance and policy is to considered a threat and therefore best opposed. That is why the capital is the most amorphous en most alienated choice maker. Capital states that the only ideological line within a communal imposed uniformity can only be the line of offer and demand. Within the capital ideology, consumerism should replace democracy. However the capital is a legitimate choice maker by form, it is everything but by nature. It doesn’t really want to take power from the people and the other choice makers, it rather wants to distribute “power” equally over the social subjects and diminish the effect of the choice makers. It’s set to destroy social power and protect only the individual power of governance, under the form of more efficient labor force, social adulthood and social mobility. The absolute social mobility and absence of social hierarchy is their aim, and their opponents are the state and society, both founded, established and maintained by the perverted and fundamentally unfree class system. Capital’s main purpose is eventually breaking the necessity of institutionalized power and the democratic tug-o-war between the lobbies and the interest groups. Along with that, capital also replaces the general will (volonté générale) by the individual will: this is the true core of consumerism.

-         emancipation: is an important premise for realizing a universal individual will. The process of emancipation is promoted with a highly developed heroic and labor ethos. A possible disadvantage is therefore the high investment costs to develop both ethos. On the other hand, capital has enough resources and trickery to manage this. Emancipation situates itself on the social level. When we talk about emancipation on the level of the state and static measures, we should name it regionalism.

-         regionalism: or static emancipation is caused by the quest for social efficiency of labor and production. De layers of supervision coincide with the market layers and are in most cases low subsidiary levels. Canalizing market processes is integrally involved within the market process itself, and therefore diminishes state action and interference. Market control becomes market steering under the governance of all market participators, both the owners of production force and the owners of labor force. Therefore, the marketplace becomes but a mere communication place between both segments. Subsidiary policy means in this context rather avoiding clusters of interest groups and power blocks in a market and the market process.

-         libertarianism: the entrist-technic method to obtain non-governance, emancipation and regionalism is realized through the political medium of libertarianism. Because it is the best political weapon to counter power, both political and social, from within.

a)      state uses: - taxes from society and capital

                              - the violence monopoly

                              - trias politica

                              - collective goods

                              - internationalism

                              - governance and policy

                              - the free market

                              - classes

                              - society’s labor ethos

b)      society uses: – peer pressure and social unity

                            - numeric majority

                            - financial power

                            - labor force monopoly

                            - emotional campaigning

                            - the free market

c)      capital uses: – production force monopoly

                            - technological and innovative knowledge

                            - the free market

                            - ownership of primary goods

                            - entrepreneur’s risk

                            - society’s labor and heroic ethos

State resources

-         taxes from society and capital: in order to maintain its power and reign consistently, the state is obliged to drain its resources from legitimate income. Taxes are being imposed on the communities and capital as both a moral duty (social correction) and a necessary evil (to facilitate state monopolies like the law). The legal power possessed by the state and the legitimate execution of it (police, judicial institute, the codified law) result in a clear hierarchic position. Society’s en capital’s almost feudal bond with the state puts the state into undisputable power, while nor society or capital can claim the cost they make on the state. States and international organizations possess the tax monopoly and impose a form of indirect control on industry and society.

-         violence monopoly: maintenance of the general order means the state has to suppress dissidence and scare off possible dissidents. The violence monopoly implies an exclusive right to violence and therefore the use of force as a legitimate mean to favor static interests and endeavor static wants. The elaborate social importance of it is meant to hush both the capital and the state by giving them no excuse to question the violence monopoly. It’s all just a matter of police versus militia. De organized armed forces versus the social force. The prestige and especially the legitimacy of the national armed forced and uniformed power en the monopolies on technology that goes with it scares us en therefore limits the potential impact that the capital and society might possess. This is why it is rather a preventive measure to protect static powers and interest, rather than protecting society and capital against external danger and the maintenance of the public order and national security. In this perspective, power is clearly seen as a scarce good, not as a right or a task.

-         Trias Politica: manned by the social elites, they are the slaves of the state. The three powers (legislative, executive, judicial) in the western tradition are the responsibility of the nation, not the elites, not the people or the citizens. It’s a logical democratic measure, but this is how the state creates her barriers, her buffer zones of elected oligarchs on which the people can avenge themselves if necessary. Democracy is nothing more than a form of social distraction to prevent people from questioning the role and meaning of the institute that is the state. De executive power is closest to the true static elites. The states and the lobbies express their preferences and the executive power must mold these orders – for that is what they truly are – in general interests and present them as a “policy”. The judicial power is filled with static vassals who will never bite the hand that feeds and speak the word of their benevolent employer, the despot that is the state. This power, the most perverted of them all, is supposed to control the legislative power, being the elites of society. In this perspective, the judicial power can be perceived as a latent but fierce spying eye, defending the interest of the state against those of society.

-         collective goods: the collective goods, such as waterways, the environment, public health, air traffic control and education are still often under state supervision or conglomerates of states (EU, NATO, NAFTA). These collective goods and services are often placed under the control and responsibility of states or international organizations, such as EPO and Interpol. Resulting from this farce it that states possess a whole arsenal of vital information and technology and so the power to keep society and capital hostage with their complex hierarchic system and valuable collective information.

-         internationalism: globalization and everything that comes with it (diplomacy, migration, multiculturalism, cultural relativism,…) manage to decimate the social impact of communities and dominant cultures by strictly orchestrating the inflation of new social (interest)groups. The general social good and the volonté générale become unclear and questionable. The state gives people incentives doubting the surplus value of a society and the benefits of a group. This results in social decay. New systems such as the free market, the globalizing communication possibilities and global mobility give states the opportunity to wage an open war against the societies and their interests. The accumulation of power of different states can play a very important role. Worldwide organizations such as the UN or the World Bank and the IMF have a monopoly to a whole lot of vital knowledge, what gives them a head-on start and an incredibly and underestimated power.

-         Governance and Policy: the monopoly on social policy has only augmented with the collapse of the Church in Western and especially European culture. The main argument for the separation of Church and State is the distribution of social influence and power. Nowadays the state has invested in labor ethos and the capital in heroic ethos and has the state succeeded in its quest to destroy his other legitimate governing rival, the Church. The monopoly of social policy became absolute. Through the Trias Politica and democracy, the state has managed to set a latent social course and therefore steers both society and capital.

-         the free market: is the result of a centuries-long tug-o-war between capital and state. With the decline and disappearance of the national sovereignty and the rise of the free market, not only borders have faded (bad for the societies) but also the local entrepreneur’s risk. The international markets brought the danger of the elaborate foreign markets within the local national markets. So the free market didn’t just bring us an abundance of economic freedom, but an enormous increase of the entrepreneur’s risk. The large national capital – state’s biggest enemy – is being ‘consumed’ by the international economic mastodons and the trust funds, while the small national capital is forced to continue working in its status of ‘small enterprise’ if it does not wish to be ‘consumed’ itself. The free market can be perceived as a perverse pact between state and world capital and not a weapon of freedom. Communication between international “capital-islands” is often exploited through diplomatic and static ways, not through the idyllic local markets. And don’t forget: although the free market is the least unfree of all current market possibilities, we are never the less all slaves of it.

-         classes: the ‘democratic’ division of society in interest groups and the socialist/Marxist separation of society in classes leads to the bankruptcy of social unity and the downfall of a powerful social entity. The state sets interest groups up against each other on the stage of the comedy that is democracy or uses the marketplace as a box ring, where the classes fight their useless struggle to the death, so it can occupy society and state fighting each other, rather then joining forces and rise against the state. Unfortunately, both society and capital turn to the state for help in the fierce struggle against one another. Attempts from society’s side to put their differences aside and link up against the exploiting and raging thieve that is the state have failed throughout history (solidarism, national-socialism, anarchism,…). Those same attempts, but from the side of the capital are present and known, but can’t seem to gain enough power to make a difference (the American Dream and libertarianism). The state doesn’t have to worry much. For now.

-         Society’s labor ethos: exploiting human greed and the Peter’s Principle have to important effects. A first effect is that the meritocratic model has provided man with the opportunity and the incentives to invest his time, energy and talents in training, improving and widen his possibilities, and therefore not investing it in a social-critic vision upon our world. Dissidents of the meritocratic social model are caught in the social web, so their criticism is either not expressed, or at least not heard. Another important effect is the economic growth and social average prosperity emerging from it, so the state denies the capital any excuse to doubt her governance and affairs. A motivated working society and a fully equipped and smoothly running economic machine produces a lot and consumes a lot, therefore the state profits a lot from it.

Community resources

-         peer pressure and social unity: society invests mostly in unity and communal interests. The influence of social pressure groups, unions and consumer organizations can often correct the course of the state and intervene in the capital’s decisions and strategies.

-         numeric majority: social pressure and unity is a natural consequence of the numeric majority of society. There are after all more owners of labor force than there are owners of production force, and the elements of the state are invisible and unknown to the outside world. Both the state and the capital benefit from a broad and diverse community: capital can drain practically unlimited labor force from it (the more, the cheaper), and the state can benefit from its taxes (the more people, the more taxes).

-         financial power: the subjects of society (the sovereign owners of their own labor force) own in total more purchase power than the owners of the production force or the state. A united society would be able to nationalize the production force and enslave the state. The capital is after all born from society en nurtures itself with the successful elements from it. The state is the vague construction around society and feasts on the fruits of the subjects’ labor. But they are both dependent on the economic strategy of society. This is why it is important for society to communicate a united message and strife for a united goal: it gives them a power beyond their natural capacities. It is the very essence of the holistic community. The phenomenon ‘purchase power’ plays a very important part within this. Through the consumerism of the adult (post)industrial society, capital has become dependent on the preference and consuming addiction of the social subjects. A coordinated governance of social consumerism and communal preferences would imply that society would have an enormous tactical influence on both the state and capital. The state prevents this by investing in labor ethos and capital by investing in both labor and heroic ethos. For now, they are on the winning hand. After al, social unity has a negative connotation nowadays, especially under the Anglo-American free market-slavery the world has to bare today. Parties and ideologies who claim to defend ‘social interest’ and the rights of all social strata are called populists, extremists, utopias and ‘just theories’.

-         labor force monopoly: society is the sovereign owner and exploiter of the labor force (at least in the present capitalist economy and society) en it can use this monopoly to impose pressure on the capital (and indirectly the state as well) and bargain its market share and value. A society as a entity within the trinity of state, society and capital, founded on its own labor and production stands or falls with the willingness of that society to sell this labor to whoever is willing to pay the right price. This is why it is of the greatest importance for the state and the capital to stimulate and encourage the social subject to develop their labor ethos. Because someone who finds pleasure and satisfaction in labor, will be willing to sell his labor for a lower price than someone who isn’t motivated to work. An elaborate society with a large labor offer will bring the price down as well. A strong differentiation between social classes encourages the subjects to compete their labor force amongst each other.

-         emotional campaigning: this might be the most powerful weapon to possess in the struggle for social power. The state nor the capital own it absolutely, but can only claim it now and then, under circumstances and conditions. The capital has after all an important commercial benefit from stimulating the human emotions and answer to the needs and wants of a certain group or time. But emotions, in their true role as scarce goods, are just like labor force sovereign property of the social subjects, and in this view society has a monopoly on it. Trends and sensitivities may be well fixed and cultivated by external factors and a certain social uniform in time and specific circumstances, a society with a strong cohesive nature can still maintain a certain level of social independence. The communal need for a healthy environment for example can be stimulated by social pressure groups who are an integral part of society, without any statist or capital interference. Both the state and capital can do nothing about it but answering to the trend.

-         the free market: as the sovereign owner of the labor force, negotiations between the exploitation of labor and the compensation of it are held on the free market (between the social subjects and capital). They can not survive without each other and therefore they can not arm and protect themselves against each other. They are dependent on one another. Still, they both try to gain the upper hand and the power over the market. The owners of labor force want to sell their labor as expensive as possible and the owners of production force want to buy their labor as cheap as possible. Contrary to the capital, society is able to enforce her interests with social pressure. The answer that capital can pose against it, is however beyond their own free will and implies both a high risk and a high cost for the capital, as well as for society (delocalization, going out of business, inflation, migration,…)

Capital resources

-         production force monopoly: owners of production force and labor force meet and bargain with each other on the free market. The role of the state on this marketplace is that of ‘security guard’ and imposes social corrections under the form of subsidies, taxes and education policy. These social corrections disrupt and interfere the natural process of offer and demand of labor force and production force and commerce. In a pure and stateless free market this communication would be much easier, smoother and more latent, money wouldn’t be a weapon of power and force and a legal form of blackmail, and interest and usury would be useless and superfluous. But in a society where labor, capital and state are one and the same entity, communication would be superfluous itself. This is the terror of communism. Dealing with the problem of market communication errors by eliminating the problem instead of solving it. In the utopist societies where there are no interest groups and no long-term benefits for a certain social group, a state, labor and capital would be all superfluous.

-         technological and innovative knowledge: the capital invests in innovation and efficiency and possesses this monopoly more or less, although it could be ‘loaned’ by authorities like the government. Society as a group can however not claim it, but a few privileged subjects who manage to gain capital’s trust to invest in their talents and capabilities can. Herein lays the phenomenon of the ultimate social mobility and social inequality that is favored by the capital. Social mobility allows subjects from all layers of society who can contribute to the innovation and efficiency of labor and production to be found and heard, so they can attract investments and the means they need to innovate. It allows society and capital to distillate elites from the widest social range possible. Social inequality allows the subjects with innovative potential to answer to social incentives to distance themselves from the majority. The capital can give them access to certain scarce goods or certain services and opportunities that are not available for the majority.

-         ownership over primary goods: this is quite a relative resource. Can we state that most primary goods and the sources of it are in the hands of capital? Are they not (anymore) in the hands of single social subjects or in the grasp of states? Trusts and the concentration of international capital have a lot of vital sources in their patrimony: oil, gas, drinking water, timber reserves, crops,… and they can legitimately request a compensation for it. The question is how “just” and “legitimate” it is for the capital to own all that, in comparison to the owners of labor force, who need these sources to develop their labor force and offer it to the market. By claiming the primary goods, the capital manages to reduce the cost of labor, because the workers pay their bosses for their own labor force. Only the subjects of society, and not society, capital or the state, can be the rightful owner of the sources of his labor force. In this view, we can clearly state that the capital does not have the right to claim these primary goods and that owning them is to be considered unjust, unfair en morally disgraceful.

-         entrepreneur’s risk: the entrepreneur’s risk contains both a financial and a social cost for the capital. Offering a good or a service and asking a compensation for it in return implies always a certain risk, both for the owners of the production force as for the owners of the labor force who invest their labor into the project and even the state, who provides the legal and legislative cadre for entrepreneurship. The core of this chain reaction of risks, alongside the free market and the competition that goes with it, lies within this entrepreneur’s risk, namely the free and determined of the owner of capital to invest his capital (gathered through the exploitation of his labor) in production force and labor in order to offer a good or a service to the market. This determined choice and the possibilities and conditions preceding it are a scarce good on themselves. The scarce good “entrepreneur’s risk” can trigger a chain reaction of risks en contains a certain – latent but certain – social risk. Not always calculated.

-         society’s labor and heroic ethos: the fact that capital can invest in the development of the labor ethos and the heroic ethos of the social subjects, implies that the development of the subject (every single one of us) is dependent on the grace and calculated choice of the capital to invest in us. To be able to claim these investments legitimately, the subject must answer to certain requirements, posed by the benevolent investors. The nature of these requirements can be merely circumstantial, but also social, genetic and personal. The power of the capital to enforce the accomplishment of these requirements is an important aspect of its relationship to society.

The capital has no interest in and certainly no benefit from a strong community. Capital has no means at its disposal to unite society under one common ‘commercial uniform’ and it has very few interest to gain from it. We could say that the “grand-capital” has a certain and reasonable advantage in the case of a single “general will to buy or sell” from the mass-consumption’s point of view, because the consummation is predictable and easier to correct for grand-capitalists. Internationalization of markets and globalization of the economy have resulted in global marketing and the ability to ‘scan’ markets to find out what people really want, even if they don’t know it themselves. But there is no such thing of a single communal “Volksgeist” or “general will”. Mass conviction happens after all on a latent lever through marketing, not through an expressed and determined social course. The capital’s investments to emancipate people from social pressure and communal conscience are investments in heroic ethos. They give the people incentives to think for themselves, to chose for themselves and to improve themselves. The effect is double: man discovers himself and invests in himself, so he doesn’t invest in corresponding with the social model and the capital profits from man’s emancipation and the contagious nature of individualism. So capital does not need to invest in a revolt against the social uniform, because it is a mere consequence of individual consciousness. The costs are low and the benefits are high, both for grand and small capital. But how do we fight the unfreedom of freedom? And why?

In a liberal free-market economy both state and capital pump money and resources in each other to benefit equally from a better outcome. Social corrections via socialism are maintained as a social cover against revolutions from within the different social layers. To legitimate themselves in society they both use the liberal strategy to grant social benefits of the system to those subjects who voluntarily “collaborate” with the system, so they can project an easy cost-benefit analysis that makes clear that is in the best interest of the subjects to choose the side of capital and state. This is the very core of statist liberalism. The state grants capital subsidies to find new strategic markets, also to the interest of tax-addicted states.  For example, the only true argument for the political left to legalize drugs is to impose taxes on it and create new social margins who keep the socialist statists in position. The profit gained from these “new markets” disappears into the pockets of the capitalists and the taxes from it feed the ever hungry state. In a liberal free-market economy, both the state and the capital are the antagonists who run the show. Society lives under the constant pressure of consumerism and is the victim to the perverse games and gambles of grand-capital and state interests. Since states own the violence monopoly they can enforce these interest with military power, which results in war. Wars for scarce goods to be precise, not general interest. Of course the grand-capital will voluntarily invest in the state’s violence monopoly to be able to exploit these ‘newly conquered markets’. A war is a market process in three stages: the conflict of scarce goods, the violent statist intervention and the artificial redistribution of these scarce goods. In a liberal society, grand capital, diplomacy, bankers, usurers, interest slavery, stock brokers and credit trusts play the sickening dance of extortion, playing with credit money that doesn’t exist, trade shares that are not real and gamble with thousands of people’s jobs and futures. Is this fair? Is this “freedom”? Their aim is to profit and to destroy those who claim profit, to provoke envy amongst people and communities, to create conflict and harvest from the horrors that come with it. To blind the social subjects and pollute their minds with the unfreedom of freedom, the dictatorship of consumerism. Small capital is perhaps liberalism’s worst victim. Because they can’t reach the fruits of the grand-capitalists’ game for they are no match. They are systematically the victim of globalized bullying and static interference. The complete competition is prevented and destroyed by both the states and the world capital. Because state and grand capital both have sworn a horrid pact to watch each other’s back and help destroy all those who claim their power. Enemy states are eliminated on the international markets with trade embargo’s. Enemy enterprises are destroyed by high taxes and unnecessary import regulations. It is the perverse game of liberalism, and we let it all go by, because we perceive it as our freedom.

High taxes are easier to bare for elaborate capital than modest, through which the biggest money masses will be maintained and the competition is forced to either disappear or defect. Can this be considered freedom? Who dares saying the free market is honest and free? Nobody does. It is “rational” and “fair”. Well then, in a free market where the rational and fair law is the law of dishonesty and unfreedom, I wish not to defend its existence.

Another tactic is that of libertarianism. Herein the most important protagonist is the moderate capitalist. To a certain extent the libertarian, but definitely the anarcho-capitalist, reject the image of the ‘homo economicus’, the economic man. The human computer that makes but rational choices based on mathematical cost-benefit analysis. He rejects the mantra of globalization, because it is enforced on the free market, and therefore not to be labeled ‘a liberty’. Globalization only leads to greed, envy, conflict, war and more and more inflation. Anarcho-capitalists focus on the here. On the direct environment. Our choices are not based on a cold cost-benefit analysis as if it were a mathematical equation. Choices are made by our preferences and our wants. If our parks and wilderness is dear to us, we will refuse to accept the cost-benefit analytic outcome that replacing our parks with factory would be the right thing to do, because it stimulates the economy and provides jobs and wealth. No. We should chose what we cherish and hold dear, not what is best!

Where liberalism has its roots in the protestant and Jewish tradition of profit and optimal situations, I believe the core of libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism can be found in epicuristic hedonism, the strife towards satisfaction and a peace of mind, the ‘ataraxia’. A libertarian thinks in patterns of autarchic coexistence in concentric and subsidiary circles. The purpose is to make sure that all the subjects of the different subsidiary social layers can benefit from the autarchy and therefore maintain themselves. And we are truly talking about the subjects themselves, not from within the social structure they live in. It is important that the subject is seen as an ego, before he is seen as a part of the social entity.

The consumer does not have a right to the world. The role of the state as a global police force and collector (thieve) of scarce goods would be impossible, or this were the case. An important insight on this matter is the proportionality between the economic freedom and personal freedom. Monopolies, interest slavery and usury are the exponents of the economic freedom and personal freedom. We are / should be able to voluntarily distance ourselves from our personal freedom, but not to the expense of the economic freedom of our neighbour. I believe our personal freedom is of a greater importance than our economic freedom. I think the right of the African farmer to be able to supply his own African market with his own African goods is far more important than my right to export my products to the African market, even if they are of better quality and lower in price. However I can and I have the right to, I wish not to. Because I cherish the sympathy for the African entrepreneur. Than what about the African market? Do I deny them to buy cheaper products of a better quality? This problem is self-solving. If the Africans buy nothing but African products, it will give the African economy incentives to grow and therefore innovate and therefore flourish. This will lower prices eventually and increase the product quality. The only thing that can help the African economy is the African economy. Import and Export are killing Africans and Asians on a daily basis. Through hunger and war. The free market doesn’t feed. It kills and creates greed and envy and racism and global tension. The OWN market feeds and nothing but the own market. It might be contradictory that we should stimulate national/regional/ethnic markets, but at the same time invest in heroic ethos, which gives people incentives to look farther than their own community. It might be. But what if we can make the people see that their future, prosperity and happiness lies but within their community? The optimal situation would be to give people both the intellectual and financial choice to chose freely. And make them choose for their communities as freely. And remember that economic freedom means autarchy, not anarchy. Reject the thieving liberal cost-benefit addict and embrace the ideal of the indifferent epicurist, who only cares about what he cherishes, not what would be best for him and his associates. Let us bring down the economy for the shareholders and turn it into the economy for ourselves. It will end all conflict, end all political farces and end the dictatorship of lobbies and diplomacy throughout the world. Let us reject all taxes, great and small, and tax only the things we personally dislike to our conscience. Eco-taxes and consumption taxes (polluter pays principle). I believe all other taxes are unjust, unfair and immoral. They have no legitimate basis and can only be interpreted as an attack on our will and freedom and a weapon of state and grand capital they don’t legitimately own and impose. The economic crisis and social challenges we face today are nothing but the recoil of this perverse so-called “liberal” world. We’re experiencing an ‘overstretch economy’ who is imploding towards her true subsidiary size and strength. We are harvesting the fruits of our own misfortunes, our global greed, our continuous raping and plundering of the earth and its possibilities. Of course, the sky is the limit, but the atmosphere will eventually burn you up. Who then should have the upper hand? Capital? The state? Society? Libertarians? A moral uniform of responsible uses of resources? No. I would say our own conscience.

{In my personal point of view the struggle is actually far more complicated and nuanced than stated above, I fear. In the radical human emancipation process which I so solemnly defend and preach, in which the individual has to face and free himself from everything that determines himself –even his genes – as if it were a natural goal and even the meaning of life itself, I recognize the role of society that opposes this holy process of emancipating myself. Social pressure, stratification and the class-based society are weighing determinants whose yoke we can not get easily rid of as the mere human beings we are. In the contrary, the cost of only questioning society, let alone the anti-social (or preferably called the post-social) struggle, that comes along with it is experienced as a great obstacle and the main incentive not to emancipate. That people will voluntarily reject society as an unconditional natural self-evident given is clearly not existent. I fear society has won this battle. But does society, being the holistic ideal image of socialization, needs to be fought despite our emancipation urge? Maybe the fact that hermits and consorts had very few success is the proof that there truly are boundaries to the human absolution. Maybe, but it is my right to refuse this ‘truth’. However it may be, where the liberal enslaves society to eternal obedience to the free market-dictatorship and where the socialist enslaves capital to serve the common good and the libertarian opposes any chain to the “choice economy” I consciously let the discussion unspoiled and open for debate. I look at everything deductively and perceive that the cost of the anti-social struggle is experienced as too high to risk. However this is not a premise to give up the anti-social struggle (at least not for me) we must value the functionality of society and even the nation to our own conscience instead of ignoring it. And its value is according to me not to be underestimated.}

So the liberal suggest that the economy is but a servant of progress and prosperity in the tradition of Enlightenment. The socialist pretends that the economy should be a servant of mankind and man’s growth from imperfect helpless creature to an Enlightened social creature in economic and socio-economic balance. Both of them accept never the less the role of the state as maintainer of order and justice and proclaim that only the just government, lead by Enlightened and just people, can posses the monopoly on knowledge of good and evil. But is that so? Are the statesmen and the statesmen only the keepers of judgment over right and wrong? How disrespectful is this towards the social subject who place their trust, their lives in the hands of the illegitimate minority that calls herself a government? This is contrary to the ideals of Enlightenment that man is on a linear evolutionary curve towards perfection. This would imply that man will reach a certain point where the state is superfluous to himself and his society. But the liberals don’t take it this far. Hypocrisy? Or just ignorance? Libertarians on the other hand are more principal and less contradictory on the matter. They do not recognize the linear evolution of man because man’s evolution can not be objectively measured or proven. I believe that it is not because we perceive our evolution as progress that we are actually progressing. We do not perceive the earth spinning, but yet we know it is. If seeing is believing, the liberals contradict their own dogma of empirical science and inductive knowledge. The libertarian claims that the time is ripening to throw off the yoke of the state and therefore man is emancipated from the superfluous subsidiary level that is “the state”. The state and all her monopolies can be maintained and executed by either higher or lower levels. The higher levels being the state conglomerates (EU, EFTA, NATO, NAFTA, OPEC, UN) or the nations themselves (being the structural societies including culture, customs and the generational surplus). Separate organs dependent on a regulated and involuntary financing (taxes) of her territorial and contractual subjects are a clear “no-go”. Man has reached the point in time (whether it is perennial or not) where the decisions, made on the subsidiary level above the subjects, must be made with consensus, with the blessing of every subject individually. This is of course not realistic and therefore the subsidiary levels will drastically drop down to small communities or even on the individual level. I believe and sincerely hope that the Hobbesian era of the silent subject and the thieving state are coming to an abrupt end. The number of these small governance communities will be variable, the conditions of the contract are clear, de benefits equal and the disadvantages only to the extent that it hurts the contract breakers, not the contract enders. Expulsion will be impossible, unless on a voluntary basis and can not contain any disadvantages on itself. Any uncomfortable outcome can only be an outcome of circumstance, not group retaliation. The right to the advantages of member-ship is after all meant to be equal to the right of voluntary retreat without disadvantages.

Ultimately, the solidarist bases himself on class reconciliation and doesn’t start from the social ideal, nor the capital ideal, nor the personal will. The solidarist struggle against the state is a struggle wherein the people oppose the state and wherein the capital is but the puppet in between them. Their strength, namely their appeal to the best of both worlds, is in the end also their weakness. Making the state a useless or degraded level by fusing capital and society is virtually impossible. After all, they’re not fighting the actual solid “state”, but the democratic system of it and their aim is to man the state with the entire people, and not just the elites. Contradictory, they want to reduce the influence of the state by inflating it. Like the socialist and the liberal it is not the aim of the solidarist to give the state up, but they proclaim that the state is a vassal to society. Important to point out is that de solidarist does not subscribe the socialist and liberal mantra of linear human evolution, but as a cyclic period. This is why it is hard for the solidarist to accept, at least if he sticks closely to his beliefs, that states adapt themselves to the needs of time. Because solidarism is a perennial philosophy, time is for them a relative and immeasurable phenomenon and evolution does not fit into that idea. However most of us still see advantages in the static uniform (e.g. the best level to maintain law and order, redistributor and social correction, protector of national interests, protector of cultural heritage and norms and values) we must keep asking ourselves, always and everywhere, what surplus value the state has under her present form and if its tasks could not be outsourced to other constructions, who can do it better and more efficiently. Whatwe can not do is see the state as a self-evidence of the human nature and accept het absolute and eternal presence, like the liberals and socialist proclaim. But we can neither stick to the dogma that everything the state does is naturally bad and could be done better, just because she has no democratic legitimacy. We can never stick to absolutions, neither the absolution of democracy, like the libertarians tend to. Nor can we pin ourselves down with any other evidence or natural self-evidence. Nor the evidence of freedom, life, liberty, the present, the future or the past.

{In my point of view, the struggle against the state is of a more fundamental nature than the struggle against society. But my struggle against the state is not of an anarchist nature, in the contrary. However I tend to follow classical anarchism, which means I think power should be radically individual. My nuance claims however that man in his natural law process of emancipation needs to question everything of both material and immaterial nature by initially rejecting it. Even the state. States may not become evident, and that is the sorrowful case today. We forgot to think farther than state borders and farther than the parliamentary benches and the holy shrine of democracy. This is the very essence of liberal hypocrisy. They heckle faith in religious writings and the strict interpretation and the impossibility of freedom that is contained in it. But they solemnly swear allegiance to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Now what is the structural difference with the Bible or the Koran? I can see no difference between the liberal and the orthodox Chassidic Jew or the fundamentalist Shiite. These self-proclaimed “Enlightened” who are so full of their Enlightened ability to be critic and question everything are questioning everything but themselves. And the self is the first thing that needs to be questioned. However claims to own the truth, is fundamentally wrong in his beliefs, even if they are right. Even worse. There is no absolute truth because nothing is absolute. And if there would be truth, it can not be perceived by man and would lie outside the cosmos. In our world, only interpretation and will matter. Science makes the big mistake to believe in what it sees and perceive their perception as truth. If man is imperfect, what nobody among us doubts, than our perception of nature is imperfect and we can never perceive truth. For the scientist who claims to know truth, is fundamentally wrong in whatever he says, even if it is true. As for the state. The state is like everything else not absolute and everyone who claims that it is, needs to be freed from the static yoke. For they can not see the imperfect nature of himself and the world. But maybe there is no need to free him. If he is free in his unfreedom, he is free to me. But I feel it as my duty to present him an alternative. But in my holy struggle against absolution and determination, we must seek constantly and perpetually for alternatives for everything imaginable. Even the state. There are only two absolute concepts in our world: emancipation and imagination. But I’m afraid it is therefore wrong, if it is true.}

The choice maker that has been challenged the most throughout time and had to fight the hardest to survive is definitely the independent capital. Both in the Bible and the Koran as in most other religions (excluding Judaism and Protestantism) the strife for profit and grand capital are considered ‘a tool of the devil’ and best to be avoided. Let it then be a painful truth that the biggest fighter of usury and interest slavery, namely the Catholic church, has always been the richest religious institution of the world. Possible explanations for the traditionally negative comportment against capital are numerous and quite logical. Especially because the majority of the world’s population throughout time could not claim any capital and capital was after all in the hands of minorities who evidently protected their own interests. Moderating mechanisms such as the divine legitimacy of the medieval “stands” society and the cooperation of the classes have put stress on important nuances, in the end the capital has experienced the most severe opposition from both the state as the community and the now long dead church.

In our radical quest for emancipation we must consider such matters as the capital and related subjects. Inductively, we see that neither the state or society has managed to destroy and take over the role of the capital, as they have succeeded with for example the church, however they have been close. This struggle has actually turned out on a draw and the peace treaty of “liberal democracy and free-market economy” during the second half of the 20^th century. Both the state and the capital can now be seen as social allies, joining forces to profit from each other and leech on the labor of the social subjects. Globalization, consumerism and mass consumption are the main effects of the liberal pact. In spite of their limited impact on society and the capital, the states – and especially the state conglomerates – are more powerful than they have ever been in history. The democratizing wave of the 20^th century allowed the states to play a bigger role on the capitalist and meritocratic stage from a more latent and background position. Their cost to weigh on the world and the people and capital on it decreased heavily, but their weight increased dramatically. The fact that states around the world have often monopolies on a wide range of goods and services (police and military equipment, information databases) give them a certain market advantage. Liberalism is therefore the perfect medium for the state and interest groups to gain elaborate profits from the fruits of the free market for lower costs. We can state that the state doesn’t fight capital (anymore) and that both groups keep each other in power in the current liberal capitalist framework that is the globalized liberal world.

Society has more or less conciliated to consumerism and mass consumption. The majority of subjects in the West belongs after all to either the liberal or social democratic segment of the political spectrum. The liberals put stress on economic prosperity and the social-democrats emphasize social correction and improved living standards. Marginal phenomenon’s such as communism or solidarism in the West are exceptional and socially too negatively connotated that they have a hard time finding both the means and the people and the incentives to make a difference or even threaten capitalism in the long run.

However radicalism in its global perspective is an effect of economic downfall I think it is unlikely that capital and state will be driven away from power anywhere soon or in the near future. The cost and the risk of a revolution under current circumstances are too high and estimated not to be worth the effort in comparison to the contemporary status quo. But from the moment the world reaches the point of the Weimar days – and we are steadily going down this road – both the cost and benefit for a revolution will drop so radically and steep down that a social revolution will be perceived as inevitable and necessary. If we reach the point were people feel that they have nothing to lose, the current system is doomed and will disappear.

But just like the state and society we can not see the absolution of capital as self-evident. It’s not because she isn’t openly opposed that it necessarily is the absolute answer for society. It isn’t even necessarily so that capital is the absolute answer for society in its current form under the current circumstances. However, I don’t doubt that the free market and capitalism under present social parameters and – keeping in mind her benefits to society and the state – is the best possible solution to our present challenges. I don’t doubt and yet I do. But because I can’t give a better answer, and because there are no answers, I do not consider it a personal quest to come up with answers. But never the less I think that is my – and maybe also your – personal duty not only to think post-democratic and post-social, but also post-capitalistic and always strife to look for better answers. They might not be there; they’re probably not there, but thinking, questioning is the source, the root of human existence.

{Even though I’ll probably match the Libertarian political uniform – in the way that I plead for a radical review of governmental functions and funding – I consider myself a radical enemy of liberalism because I think that the human freedom is totally subordinated to the human will. I defend this idea on every aspect: social, economic, personal and artistic. In the present capitalist world economy the mantra of freedom is law and is to be interpreted vaguely. Interest slavery and usury are from a liberal point of view perfectly okay because they fit in a free-market system. But interest, usury and monopolies imply for me a fundamental unfreedom. The mantra of liberalism states that my freedom goes as far as where the freedom of my neighbor begins. But how can this justify what happens on the free market? People who live in debt are not free and people can not chose freely for a free-market economy. There are no alternatives. You are thrown into it and there is no free choice. How is this free? This threatens the rights of men, namely the voluntary rejection of personal rights. But yes, there is no such right. There is no such freedom. Well anticipated by the liberals though, because in the universal declaration of human rights, the Koran of the liberal dictatorship, that is impossible to reject or even question your own rights and liberties. Why is that? How is that ‘too far’? Why are we not free to be unfree? Do our freedom addicts fear the end of their reign of freedom? I bet they do. So we can conclude that we are far from free. We are no longer the slaves of God or Kings or States. We are the slaves of freedom. I wish not to think in terms of natural law and natural liberties or self-evidence. By rejecting this and the concepts of ‘voluntas’ and ‘libertas’ I can also easily dodge the label of libertinism. How can I worship God if I chose not to, whether he exists or not? How can I worship freedom if I don’t believe in it, whether I am or not? I even manage to dodge the label of anarchism, because I believe that ultimate freedom and radical absolution is a boiling point, but not a goal. Even worse, my hole quest for radical human emancipation is a flagrant lie, because I call upon absolute freedom to prove my point. A flagrant lie that is a lie because of its absolute character and content. My counter argument, wherein I state that the boiling point of absolution is not a goal, but that the ultimate free Enlightened individual is only then able to voluntarily submit himself to his chains of preference (love, society, capitalism,…), is therefore false. But maybe the value of radical emancipation lies not in its goal, the voluntary submission, but maybe in the strife to an absolution that does not exist. Therefore my manifesto has no meaning, no purpose, no goals to set and no dream to pursuit. Therefore this is not an ideology or a call for action, but a mere idea. A twisted idea full of contradictory concepts and no finality. An idea that has no beginning nor an end. An idea that is not even personal, but merely the result of imperfect human imagination. Therefore this idea is life itself and a celebration of the imperfect and fowl creature that is the derailed human being and his meaningless pity life. It is wrong, and therefore perfect.

But there is a fourth type of beans. Bask beans. Now, the Basks do not have a bean-growing tradition and the bean is not a common food product in Bask cuisine. So the bean farmers are scarce, as is, of course, their bean production. Now, because the learn-effect (the more a production technique is embedded in a culture, the more efficient it is produced and allocated) does not play a significant role within the Bask context, because the demand is low, the production cost of a single Bask been is higher than the production cost of the American, the Chinese or the French bean. The quality is also considerably low, because the low demand does not force the bean farmers to invest in quality, nor in a lower production cost. Now, in the supermarket, the Bask beans are not as expensive as the French beans (but considerably expensive), but their quality is seemingly lower than the French beans’ quality.

Now, within an American, non-identitarian, rational economic cost-benefit analysis the consumer would prefer the American beans. Relatively low price and good quality. If there wouldn’t be American beans anymore for whatever reason or if the price would go disproportionately up in relationship with the Bask consumers purchase power, the European inflation and the quality of the American bean, the consumer would switch to French beans. Those are seemingly more expensive than the American beans, but the quality is similar, or even better. Relatively speaking, it wouldn’t matter a great deal, because of the disappearance of American beans or its rising prices.

Now if the French beans would disappear and assuming he does not want to choose a substitute product for beans, the rational consumer now has two options left: the Chinese cheapest beans with poor quality, or the Bask expensive beans with poor quality. He would, of course, choose the Chinese beans. Stretching this situation both over time and space, the Bask bean farmers would be forced to grow something else because nobody wants their beans. It’s as simple as that and I think we would all agree on that. And the Americans and French would still be able to produce beans and produce a significant bean supply for the significant bean demand. Even the Chinese would rationally keep producing a certain amount of beans in order to answer to the discriminatory demand for the cheapest beans (due to low wages or rational greed). This as a whole would be a perfect, sound and rational market situation and the rational libertarian would agree on both the consumer’s decision and the producer’s decision.

Now, the identitarian Bask would not follow that same pattern. Without choosing the same analytical think pattern as his non-identitarian fellow consumer, he would also use free market principles to analyse the market situation before him (the four types of beans) and make a “rational” free market decision. He wouldn’t buy the American beans. Even though there is no information deficit (it says on the bowl the beans are American and the identitarian consumer knows their price and quality), his anti-American sentiment, common within most of the European nations and traditions, is dear to him and therefore he sets a higher subjective price. Adding the price of his aversion to the price of the beans (wages minus subsidies plus taxes), the American beans would be the most expensive of all four types. So, the Identitarian Bask, does not want to buy the American beans, who are in his opinion, the most expensive beans, maybe even considering their quality.

In fact, the identitarian Bask might have a general aversion towards all foreign products. He might hate Chinese communists, and hate French capitalists. He would buy the Bask beans. They are home grown and because of that most valuable to the Bask consumer. The relative value the Bask grants his Bask beans is higher than the market value, therefore he will buy the Bask beans, analysing the purchase as a reasonable market choice. Rational or not, the libertarian has no valid argument to protest this identitarian market choice. The consumer was offered a differentiated range of price and quality relations of a single basic product (the bean) and the consumer made a choice.

Now, let’s look at the consequences of the identitarian rational choice of the Bask consumer and change bean agriculture with drinking water production and bottling, because of water’s indispensible and inelastic nature (the demand for water will always remain constant). Yet, the few Bask water producers and bottlers, who charge a high price within their price cartel and because of the inelastic nature of the demand, will sell more than the big multinational water producers and bottlers, who can charge lower prices (lower production cost and high marginal value of production), because Bask consumers desire Bask water, produced and bottled by Bask labour, paid by Bask capital and sold on the Bask market. The European consumer will contribute a higher value to European products and a higher cost to say, American products (the social stigma of driving an American gas-guzzling car). Would it lead to any negative externalities because of the identitarian choice? Are identitarians around the world making false choices, even though they really are both consumers and producers on a free market place? I think not. And neither should the libertarian. I say the identitarian is a libertarian who has more economic parameters to make a free market choice. He cherishes the own, which is very precious to him. Even though there is no rational explanation for his choice, but a mere emotional, we cannot deny him this right, nor accuse him of not being free-market oriented.

However, the negative externalities only come about when governments come up with identitarian policies and start making these choices for the consumer, way before the individual consumer has an actual want or need.

A lot of European governments, mainly in Spain, Italy and France, have this identitarian reflex. They charge high import taxes to keep foreign substitute goods of their markets (in order for their constituents to “buy identitarian”). When Berlusconi asks his people not to fly with foreign airline companies but to fly identitarian, with Alitalia, he should just ask it, not tax foreign airlines to create artificial stimuli to fly with Alitalia.

I myself am, alongside a probable majority of Europeans, a convicted identitarian. I have a want to buy local goods, even if international free market goods might be cheaper or have a higher quality. I cherish the local aspect of goods and services and that is my right. However, being the identitarian I am, I will never allow governments to make identitarian choices for me. The government has no “right” to restrain both import and export. The government, whether it shares my identitarian, nationalist and segragist views or not, it has no right to make any choice of any sort in my place.

Unfortunately, most Europeans tend to differ and support government intervention in order to “save” the national identity. But then again, from an identitarian point of view I would wonder what the value of a culture and an identity is if it needs saving in order to survive: just like the company that cannot compete on the free market, regardless of its conditions, should be competed away, so should civilizations, cultures compete freely, with no governments to help them survive or want to destroy them.

why we should reject rather than revolt

The political soldier identifies himself, as he develops his ideology, with a given political institute, whether it be a party, a think group, an ideology, a book, a writer, a set of writers, or solely with himself. Either way, he will come to the conclusion that his ideas find or did not find fertile ground within the social reality he lives and functions in. Even the individualist anarchist is confronted with other people and their convictions and has to learn to communicate and function within these social relationships in order to exchange information, satisfy wants and needs of both himself and significant others. In this sense, F.A. Harper’s “hermit” is the only person that is truly free. For him, there is no social reality because he has excluded himself from any social relationship and any significant other, in order to be able to answer to his desire to reject a social reality. It must be said, a political or ideological idea or sentiment is not necessary for human interaction or a market situation. However it does define the perception of the (significant) other within his or her social and circumstantial context. It is even possible for an individual to reject any “idea” behind his actions, which of course puts human action back in its original sense of methodological individual choice as a result of a (semi-)rational cost-benefit analysis. On a general basis, it would not be wrong to state the overall ‘spine’ of our choices is intertwined with our image of ourselves, the other, society, metaphysical (non-)realities etc.

Even though there is no absolute reality and our definitions of any given word or subject (be it abstract or not) are never equal to the definitions of the (significant) others, we compare ourselves with those significant others and merely perceive that our social and personal views are similar or different. We compare and we match up with those that have similar views and use similar arguments to get to those similar views. Now we are divided in a number of fractions. Some fractions consisting of only one person, some of a great number of people, and some ideas we might imagine ourselves,  are not represented at all within our social reality at the time. Yet, even those who are the sole representatives of an opinion and therefore have an opinion monopoly, still have to interact with others in order to function, assuming he does not choose the path of the hermit and withdraws himself from the social reality, which is physically impossible under the present spatial conditions.

In order to plan their society, these commons find themselves on an idea market. Whether this society is a democracy or a dictatorship or anything in between is irrelevant, because nor the king nor the democratically elected representative is able to tell what the citizen or constituent or voter should think and steer your mind. And whether we like it or not, in the end the ideas that are ‘bought’ by a majority of social subjects mostly form and manage society. Not only is the king who suppresses his citizen majority with an oligarchic court and a rigid police force illegitimate, his regime has a very low stamina and the risk of failure is high. His means to maintain power (police, propaganda, repression, redistribution of wealth, etc.) are costly and its efficiency will remain low. However keeping these truths and historic facts in mind, over a large time span we can legitimately state that the opinions and ideas that have found fertile ground within the mind of the majority of a developed society will determine the course of that society. This only would work under two important premises: one, the opinions and ideas are effective and at least those who support these views (the majority) benefit from it more than they would benefit under another idea; and two, the majority stays a majority. If people lose interest or ‘external elements’ are added to the society which results in a decreasing number of supporters, the idea would implode and disappear or would at least be marginalised.

In this postmodern age of intellectual denomination and the (state-ignited) ideological supermarket and cultural/philosophical relativism that sprout from that, the inflation of ideas, views and ideological prostitution (democratization) has drastically devaluated the absolute value of the single view. The liberal media and political spectre have forced political soldiers to mellow out and incorporate “compromise” within their beliefs in order to disable dissidence and guarantee obedience. These truly are challenging times for the “real” political soldiers, who do not choose the path of the democratic farce and the party-political poker game. He who chooses the path of compromise is not a political soldier, but a diplomat. The political soldier will win or loose, live or die. His ideological flag is clear and unspoiled and shoots straight arguments at his enemies and wears a thick armour that is his credo. He is a noble warrior and should be a dignified victor or a worthy loser. Either way, the political soldier has a clear conscience, fighting for what he believes is right. The political diplomat on the other hand might have an idea as fierce and outspoken as the soldier, but will meet with his opponents in dark alleyways and negotiate. He will mellow his conviction out and therefore betray it. He waives the white flag of surrender, while it is truly the flag of defeat.

Doubting victory is admitting defeat. As is embracing compromise.

Whether these partycrats call themselves progressive or conservative is totally irrelevant. First of all do they embrace the party-political “game” and therefore can never be considered “progressive” or “reform-minded”, because they choose a system that promises victory, but at the same time guarantees defeat. Second, those who find themselves in or choose to be a part of the majority (the ideological majority and partial majority) can also be named nothing but conservative. He who is in power does not want to ‘change’ the scenery, for he is on the throne, and knows he gained power from the citizens under the present conditions. Even the so-called minority is truly conservative. It can only wait for the majority to make mistakes, and sell that to their electorate, under the present conditions. They are but grey vultures in a farce that is democracy. They can speak of change, but they never will, nor would they want it if they could. Even the libertarians and individual anarchists who choose the way of the party and embrace democracy are not in the clear. Even though their collaboration with the democratic majority spoils their whole mission. And power corrupts. It is unfortunately not certain that, if the libertarians would be on the political throne, they would truly diminish the state. For they are in charge and therefore have power. Power to steer. Power to influence. Power to “reign” in the libertarian ways.

Now, those in the political margins of society, who do not embrace the democratic dance of lies and deceit mostly are revolutionaries. They wish to ‘smash’ the system that defines these margins as margins and defines themselves as ‘norm’. But most of these barbarian smashers have an urge to rebuild. To swap roles. To change the rifle from one shoulder to the other. It is the dogma of most of the revolutionaries, especially the egalitarian leftist revolutionaries (the communists, national socialists, national Bolsheviks etc.), because they still do embrace the root of the democratic farce, namely the power of the majority. Whether it be the working class or the ‘elements of racial purity’, their revolution would succeed or fail depending on nothing but numbers. Their ideology is totally subjected to the numbers of its support. Which makes them nothing but democrats themselves. In a time of developed property rights and a strong sense of ownership in the minds of ourselves and others, thinking a revolutionary spirit is slumbering in the minds of the silent majority, is unwise. They are not silent from slumber, but hang on to what they have and what they know. The egalitarian “democratic” revolutionary will time and time again be disappointed by his supporters and therefore by his own ideas. The Russian Revolution failed eventually. Lenin thrived on social injustice and a pandemic identity crisis after a terrible defeat in a terrible war. He did not convince people of the socialist ideal, but convinced people to do away with the tsarist regime and the “old” institutions that clearly failed. If the Russians would truly be communists in their hearts, the Russian state wouldn’t have been smothered by party propaganda, the Polit Bureau and its statist bullying. The Bolshevik revolutionaries failed and will continue to fail, as long as they believe in the greater power of numbers, rather than the power of great ideas.

The elitist revolutionary does have a certain sense of intellectual honesty. He is honest enough to acknowledge that embracing the weapon of numbers is embracing democracy and therefore selling out your revolutionary principles. He is mature enough to see that an increase of support, what I call “supportive inflation”, implies a mellowing-out of basic principles in order to keep and keep receiving the new supporters, what I call “ideological devaluation”. He acknowledges that the self is the only one that will fully support and subscribe his own views and that the views of the significant other will always vary. He even admits that the larger the group he identifies himself with, the more his idea would have to devaluate in order to be able to make those connections with others. He therefore chooses to keep his ideological core group small. His basic premise is that this small fraction should gain power, “smash” the system and create an order to their liking, for the simple reason that they know how the system should be and function, and that the majority does not. So in a sense, the only way the differ from an everyday democrat is that the do not embrace the rules of majority versus minority. Whether they would imply an internal democracy or not is again irrelevant. The egalitarian revolutionary plays the game foul, but doesn’t cheat. The elitist revolutionary plays the game foul as well, but cheats in the process. In this sense, the egalitarian revolts in a more honest way, because he still applies the tit for tat strategy within the rules of his game. The elitist is a cheater. He first of all has to get some sort of a numeral advantage to “gain” power. However, he cheats the basic idea of the game theory by not participating in the tit for that. It is a sneaky and ineffective way to revolt. Changing the rules, winning and claiming you beat your opponent fair and square is cheating and this is bound to come back at you. It must not be stipulated any further that the elitist revolutionary needs a costly and effective institute to prevent a bottom-up revolution against their top-down elitism. Both by democratic and egalitarian revolution elements. A fine example of elitist revolutionaries were the Shogun dynasties in 18^th and 19^th century Japan, who managed to bring down the imperial Japanese state with a very modest number of supporters and warriors. They remained in power for a long time and had an effective government and did not participate nor cause many a conflict during their reign. But then again, they did “create” a system of their own, and for the ‘majority’ of Japanese citizens, the change of power did not matter a great deal for them and did not mess up their way of life or social reality drastically. Also the Roman civil war can be brought down to the elitist war between Marius and Sulla, the populares clan and the optimates clan. However, as understanding I am towards elitist revolution and how I tend to favour its ways over those of the of the egalitarian ‘democratic’ revolutionaries, I cannot support them fully. Never ever. They still believe in the power of successive systems as an answer to society’s problems and needs. They still believe in the power of overthrowing and rebuilding. In fact, their perception that they answer to society’s problems and needs is an illusion. Rousseau’s volonté general is an absolute illusion. There is but the aggregate of wants and needs from society’s subjects, but not a general interest that overrules the wants and needs of the civil subjects. It is their perception, their wants and needs projected with false argumentation to be “in the interest of society”. There can never be accurate ‘social’ planning, mere personal conviction and individual planning. A government, not even another person can “know” what is best for me, only perceive in his own imperfect perception what would be best for me, with the premise that HE would be ME in the given situation. Not that the Ego always knows what is best for himself, the empathy of the other is formed around his ability to put his in your place, not think in your place. Empathy remains an externality of egoism, as stated by Ayn Rand. Altruism is but the institutionalised version of empathy.

The fallacy of the elitist remains however the same. His sense of paternalistic empathy is charming, but wrong. The ruler thinks to rule in the way he THINKS is the best, and is therefore determined by his imperfect perception and entire imperfect human nature. Therefore his analysis of the world and even the perception of its problems are distorted. And as we all know, the first perfect human will be God. Even the leader who claims to act out the word of God will not act legitimately. For his perception of something that is claimed to be perfect will, yet again, be distorted through his imperfect persona. The elitist creates the majority in his own mind and acts as he pleases. In that way he is wrong, being blind towards his own perception and conditions of his nature. He might not think he is God, but his alleged divinity does prove him wrong.

What remains of ideas on this good earth, but those of the hermit, the democrat, the elitist and the egalitarian revolutionary? Is there another alternative? In a strict sense there isn’t. In order to manage a society these are the only ones you have. The hermit turns his back on society to live a truly free life. He quits the game, walks away and does not even consider whether he lost or won it. He has no need to play. Therefore no need to win.

The democrats play the game amongst each other in a civilized tit for that game. The winner can be king until he messes up and is defeated by the other democrat. The game does not change and the rules also stay the same. The democrats perform a civilized dance. It doesn’t get them anywhere, but it makes them feel good and safe.

The egalitarian revolutionaries also play along. They accept the rules (which does make them democrats) and when they see their chance, cheat. They play to win and when they seize control over the game, change the rules in their advantage. The egalitarian revolutionaries are cunning, but play at high stake, compromising their power with their numbers and their devaluated ideology. Their revolution is bound to end and bound to be succeeded by another revolution. This, of course, creates an incentive to have a “perpetual” revolution. In order to distract the supporting majority from puppeteering themselves, the puppeteer will constantly chance his mask and tell the spectators that the puppeteer is constantly changing. This is of course a lie, but a cunning way to reduce the chances of a counter-revolution that will sweep the egalitarian revolution away.

The elitist revolutionary does play along, but cheats from the beginning. It requires him, when not yet in power, to be already a part of an elite in order to gain power. The fact that there are consequences in order to be an elitist revolutionary, undermines his whole goal. His strategy is determined by his starting grid. An effective elitist putsch needs help in the right places. And how it will, once succeeded, maintain his power and sell it to the silent “ruled” majority, is unknown. The cost of keeping everyone satisfied and quiet will be very high.

Yet, there is another option. Nor is it democratic, nor is it revolutionary, nor is it the way of the hermit. The hermit doesn’t want to play the game. The democrat plays the game according to the rules. The egalitarian revolutionary plays the game according to the rules and changes both game and rules when he wins. And the elitist cheats. Both his counter players, the game and even himself.

Yet, there is the political soldier that turns his back from the battle and builds himself a castle. Like Harper’s hermit, he turns his back on the game and refuses to play. But unlike the hermit, he does not withdraw himself from his social reality in order to be truly free. This political soldier withdraws him solely from the game, but remains wandering across the battlefield, across the game table. He is the rejecter. He does not want to play the game, for he knows he already won. In his castle he is king, and outside he is not.

The revolutionaries believe in the power of successive systems. One changing the other and changing the other, time and time again. They do not see that the problems does not lie in the system, but is the system and is any system.

The democrats feel safe within their game but are hypocritical stagnant dancers. The egalitarian revolutionary just changes systems. He just puts on another record and performs another dance. Yet his dance is as stagnant and slow as the democrats’ dance, for he beliefs in the power of great numbers, not in the power of great ideas.

The petty elitist lives but in the greatness of his own mind and is drunk with interventionist compulsion. He has a great idea, but does not seem to see that it is but projected on himself and not on his people. Therefore he identifies others with himself, which makes him an egalitarian after all and which makes him the saddest revolutionary of them all.

Now the rejecter is noble and truthful. He is in his castle, minding his own business. Does not care about the thoughts of others but those of himself. He does not care whether his views are shared by others or not. He has no desire to play the game, only desire to interact when he has a need or a want. The rejecter looks solely for satisfaction of himself and of those he loves. He does not seek power. In fact, he rejects even the existence of the game. He is the only one who sees that power over oneself is already a difficult and precise science. He has no wish to have institutionalised power over another, let alone their minds or the entire society.

For the rejecter truly is the noblest of political soldiers. By not being one. He rejects the polis. He himself is a polis. He keeps his ruling to himself. The rejecter is a truly great person. And for all I know, I’m the only rejecter I’ve ever met.