By Cake Boy
The problem Liberland (the right-libertarian/ancap-free zone) always had was that the surrounding countries didn’t acknowledge it. They wanted to end the project.
Rojava (the left libertarian free zone)does not have this problem, because they are stronger, bigger, and more people live within their domain.
What can we conclude from this? If the Liberland people had joined Rojava and if Rojava had been tolerant toward them, they could have existed in the framework of libertarian unity. A right libertarian faction could have joined a broader left-libertarian project. Both would benefit from this.
This didn’t happen because right and left libertarians always saw each other as enemies. They saw each other as a threat. But is this the case? Are they a threat to each other? I don’t think so.
The woman from Kurdistan, the Rojava woman, is a feminist. But, it’s not the case that they impose their feminism on the muslim women who also live in Rojava. The right-wing libertarian/Liberland woman will probably be less feminist than the Kurdish Rojava woman (or, they will be feminist in a different way). Would the Kurdish woman accept this? Probably they would, because they also tolerate Muslim women, who wear the niqab, and who have conservative ideas. If they accept traditional women from the Middle East, then they also accept traditional women from the West.
Left libertarianism is not communism. Communism didn’t allow Islam, conservatism, or tradition within its rationale. It demanded modernism/progress. In libertarian leftism, the people decide for themselves. And often, the people are more traditional than the bureaucrats and intellectuals.
So, the municipalities in Rojava are based on mutualist economics. There are markets, but there is a usufruct perception of land. Land is for personal use, not for landlords to extract rent. In that sense, we could see Rojava as the first large-scale Proudhonian system (this is strange, because the leftists who support Rojava are, in most case,s not that positive about Proudhon).
The Liberland people could create a municipality within Rojava, in which they own some hectares of land. People could rent there if they want—a voluntary capitalism.
Would capitalism then slip into Rojava? That’s what leftists might say. You let capitalism get into our system! I don’t think this has to be the case.
There is, for example, Islam within Rojava, but this doesn’t mean that the Kurdish woman forget their feminist ideas.
There should be clear rules. The right libertarians have their own municipality/canton but will not take over other domains. I don’t think most right libertarians want that. Not all libertarians are large-scale landowners, after all. The owners of massive amounts of land will probably stay in America because they enjoy the protection they get from the state. The right libertarians who focus a lot on property often do so because they are afraid of communist tendencies. But, libertarian leftism is not communism—something people tend to forget nowadays.
We should also not forget that the Liberland people wanted a small place for themselves in which they could live the way they wanted. They never wanted to build some colonialist empire. They wanted to live like capitalists, but they never imposed their capitalism on others, it seems.
When you’re anti-capitalist, it’s often not the capitalism per se that you rebel against. It’s more the threat and force that comes with this capitalism you don’t accept. The problem isn’t landlordism in itself. The problem is that there is no alternative to banks and landlords. The same goes for communism. There is a big difference between voluntary socialist communes and top-down Maoist collectivisation/control. We often don’t talk about these nuances when we say we are ‘anti’ something. However, these details are very important for an understanding of the world.
So, if we look at it more clearly, what is Rojava’s left-wing libertarian/mutualist economy? People use property for personal use, and there are markets. What do these Liberland people want? They want a little bit of property and free markets. In theory, both are different, but in reality, they function more or less the same.
On a pragmatic level, left and right libertarians could work together within an panarchist format. The culture war resulted in fragmentation, making this coalition impossible. The culture led to people not looking for solutions or compromises. I would say the culture war stagnated anarchism a lot.
On the other hand, right-wing libertarians’ use of the word ‘capitalism’ was also not that practical. When we think about capitalism, we think about the American empire and neoliberal globalism. We don’t think about some small-scale farmer or homesteader.
Last thing about it. What was right libertarianism, at its core? What did Rothbard aim for? He tried to blend classical liberalism with American mutualism. As we have seen, Rojava is mutualist. If classical liberal elements are put within something like Rojava, then Rothbard’s theory has been put into practice. However, this can only happen through dialogue and concessions from both sides.
I think that Liberland could be blended within a mutualist rationale. Something leftists don’t want to acknowledge, because they do not want to be associated with the lifestyle/aesthetics of the liberland people. But i look at these issues from an analytic and rationale perspective. Politics is not a lifestyle. Politics is more like game theory.
This text was based on the work of Springtime of Nations (an anarchist on YouTube), who talks about Rojava from his libertarian perspective.
What do you guys think? I would like a reaction from both leftists/mutualists and rightwing libertarians.
