Isn’t it just another myth invented by statists? Everytime I hear anarchists arguing in favor of so called “national defense” I die a little inside…seriously, why is that? I personally do not give a crap about nationalities, races etc. at least on economical sense, so what is it to defend? How free market society can support “national defense”? Isn’t it a statist concept that differentiate “us” from “them”? Isn’t it necessary to have a State in order to have a “national defense”?
Enlighten me, please. What anarchists mean exactly when they say “we need to have some sort of national defense”? Why national? Why mere “defense” is not sufficient?
Again, word “national” in my book is another variation of “statist” (adjective).
National defense is reality. In ancapistan same as everywhere else. Should somebody powerful attack Chicago people from Houston are going to come to their aid and in much greater numbers than people from Mexico City. That isn’t to say there aren’t other types of defense as well. Both sub-national and supra-national.
So you would be no likelier to contribute to defense of a town in your country than to that of a town in another, but seeing you are just one person this is completely irrelevant. Unless you think that in ancapistan everyone would share your sentiment.
Was there a Lithuanian nation before there was a Lithuanian state in 1918? Did Lithuanian nation continue to exist past 1940 when there was no longer a Lithuanian state?
there were lithuanian tribes, yes, but I don’t care how those people called themselves, we are all mixed, we all fucked with different “races”, nationalities etc. so to believe that there is such thing as “nationality” is ludicrous. Nationalities are tribalism. All tribalism is collectivism and all collectivism is pretty much evil or can be used for evil deeds, so I don’t quite get your point.
What I would say is that defense is just another service that should/would be provided by private (free market) institution. Sure, they can “collide” so to speak into forming one big national DRO in case of some sort of war, but I am skeptical about it.
I just don’t understand the fuss around this issue among anarcho-libertarians. My only objection is using word “national” because it implies that there are some border to defend, like a State. The only thing that needs defense is private property. Leave imaginary lines on maps to statists.
I am not talking about Lithuanian tribes. I am talking about Lithuanian national movement and Lithuanian national awakening of the second half of the 19th century. Since Lithuanian national feeling is in fact older than Lithuanian state and since it easily survived the destruction of Lithuanian state there is reason to believe it (and with it a de facto Lithuanian nation) would continue to exist even should Lithuanian state give way to anarchy.
You apparently do not feel yourself a part of this nation, which is your choice, one that has nothing to do with libertarianism, but is instead a value choice. Rothbard explicitly saw the possibility nations would thrive in anarchy. See National Self-Determination and Nations by Consent.
Personally I see for-profit firms viable only where it comes to defense against crime. Defense against a serious military invasion however requires such self-sacrifices it may only be pulled off as a form of charity (and sacrifice is always more likely for the benefit of people you feel a greater connection to, your relatives and then co-nationals rather than complete strangers).
My prediction is defense against external conquest would be warded off by local militia chapters similar to your volunteer fire department which would ultimately link together in a national militia federation (which would maybe have multiple components with different thoughts on strategy and manner of organisation each with hundreds of seperate outposts). This is not to say they would not maintain other types of relationships as well, but the national associations would be the ones with the most weight.
I don’t believe there is such thing as “nation”. It has nothing to do with feelings, which are, by the most part a result of constant indoctrination in public schools. And I would argue, that in free society, such thing as “nationalism” etc. would vanish (eventually). The concept “nation” is only useful for those seeking power and wanting to submit people around them into defending the idea of a state, so that’s what lithuanian nation is all about, according to me.
The so called “lithuanian tribes” existed for millenia but it only means that it is a part of tribalist society and has nothing to do with free thinking and freedom.
I don’t disagree on your second part about defense though. However, I would stil call it “local defense” not national.
how do you know this? I believe that feeling was a simple feature of tribalism and it was always there through millenia since those tribes started calling themselves lithuanians etc. Nothing more or less. What arose was rebellion against slave masters. National feeling so to speak, again, is useful only when you want to control people around you, but it is the antithesis of true freedom and free market society.
So your first said it was something that is mainly the product of public schools. But now you are saying it arose in pre-modern times before there was any public schooling. “Nothing more or less.”
I think in older days nationalism was a useful tool (wars between different tribes etc.) but in later ages to the modern times it would have died out in my opinion if not for the states, which keep perpetuating this myth. I may be wrong on this in a historical sense but I am sure and strongly beleive that it is stupid idea and people would be better of without it (especially for the reason that it can be used for the state to appeal to people’s nationality in order to make them to kill other group of people of different nationality).
Hope that makes sense.
P.S. at the end of the day, anarchism is the political system of tomorrow and nationalism has little to no place in it. Not that I dislike it, but just because it will simply won’t serve any purpose.
Of course. That is the underlying purpose, though not specific to states. Why would a smart white man unite with a stupid white man under the banner of white supremacy? Why would an energetic worker unite with a slob worker? Who would choose such low standards of merit as skin colour and geographical location upon which to base an identity? Not the elite. National defense is the defense of the fragile ego from the scythe of marginality.
Family? Humanity? What if “my people” are: Bruce Lee, a little yellow fellow; Ludwig von Mises, a big-nosed jew; Usain Bolt, a big black beast; the welfare bum whose aberrant parents deprived him of everything and threw him out on the street, a man that standing in my shoes would have dominated the same scum that throw loonies into his hat. What sort of defense tactics would you suggest for my “nation”?
National defense would just be the nomenclature that people in society use to define security from foreign invasion over an arbitrary land mass. Some standing army will have to be maintained in case of large-scale attack.
Is this about ‘national’? Let us than use ‘aggregate’ defense, in order to avoid the concept of nation.
Now, in a nutshell defense must be ‘aggregate’ since it is subject, at least as it is now, to huge eocnmies of scale: the cost of defending against a numerically superior enemy is just staggering. Thus, defense must be ‘aggregate’ in order to be feasible, and financing aggregate defense is very, very difficult. This is why we speak of ‘aggregate defense’ and not ‘aggregate homebuilding’ or ‘aggregate web design’. This is all.
There is no feeling of kinship among your nation. A village of certain nationality may find itself under attack and will be instantly the destination of rowdy young men of said nationality eager to defend it for the chance to sing patriotic songs and a tap on the back. But what will Bruce Lee do for you without a thought of material recompense? You are nothing to him.
I would only accept “nationalism of ideas”, meaning, that I would defend and would like to support people whose ideas and values are similar to mine. And fyi, lithuanians, for example, hold very different ideas and values so I do not associate with them in general. Actually, most of them are more foreign to me than an asian guy in Thailand or Japan. Forget the culture, to me it is just another myth of mass control, which only has a sentimental value to me.