Translated from German with the help of AI. The original is the authoritative version.
With Trump's re-election, niche ideas from libertarian Silicon Valley circles suddenly stand in the media spotlight. Much has been written about the exotic ideas of monarchism and libertarianism that were carried, through Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin, via J.D. Vance, David Sacks, and Elon Musk, into the heart of the US government.
Murray Rothbard, who would have turned a hundred this week, bears much of the responsibility for the sympathy of self-styled libertarians toward authoritarian forms of rule. Rothbard was actually an anarchist and one of the most important leading thinkers of American libertarianism. Given Rothbard’s anarchism, it is no surprise that he rejected the political programme of liberalism in many of its parts. Instead of liberal democracy or the Enlightenment ideal of public education for all citizens, he wanted to abolish the state entirely.
For these reasons, Rothbard also did not see himself as a classical liberal but rather as a libertarian, and saw American libertarianism as a movement that could break with these parts of the liberal tradition. Rothbard was thus no democrat and, unlike some of those he influenced, did not particularly sympathise with monarchies. He does, however, make an argument about public goods that was later used in a similar form by his student Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Public goods, he says, are not simply collective property, since only those who actually have the disposal of them really have power over them. Bureaucrats would not simply do what is best for the general public but would want to extract as much profit from these goods as possible. In a democracy, those in power would only exploit goods as fast as possible until the next election. That often leads to short-sighted decisions. In a monarchy, by contrast, public goods are in the long-term possession of the ruler.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe uses a similar argument against democracy, but unlike Rothbard he is convinced of the advantage of monarchy over democracy.
According to Hoppe, in a monarchy public goods are the private property of the monarchs, who would hold back in exploiting these goods so as not to lose future sources of income. On Hoppe’s view, this would mean that the monarch holds back, say, on corporate taxation because he does not want to choke his future income through better economic growth. The class differences between nobility and bourgeoisie would also work in freedom’s favour. The subjects would stand in solidarity with one another and would defend their property rights more firmly. Hoppe’s anarcho-capitalism consists of private cities that function similarly to monarchist city states and where one lives on the land of a large landowner who, like a medieval prince, rules over his estate.
Inspired by Hoppe and Rothbard, the programmer and blogger Curtis Yarvin carried the mix of libertarianism and monarchism into Silicon Valley and, via Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, also to J.D. Vance and the second Trump administration. Above all, Hoppe’s anti-democratic stance influenced him strongly: „Professor Hoppe’s Democracy the God that Failed is still one of the best anti-democracy tracts I’ve read, and it was most certainly the first”. Curtis Yarvin argues for treating the USA as a company and organising the state along the same lines. At the top there would be a kind of CEO monarch, who could shape things almost without limits. Democracy, rule of law, state bureaucracy, and politically independent agencies are a thorn in Yarvin’s side. Instead, in the ideal case the world would be populated by independent, private-economic cities. In such a case one could choose which private city to live in, and there would be a market-based incentive for CEO monarchs to rule well.
Many monarchists of this sort are strongly influenced by the so-called paleo-libertarian current. Paleo-libertarianism followed a strategy designed in the 80s and 90s by Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard. The aim was to unite libertarian, conservative-to-reactionary, and populist elements and to form an alternative to the conservative establishment in Washington, DC. Paleo-libertarianism was meant to help revive the Old Right, in which anti-state, isolationist, and anti-democratic positions were widespread. Paleo-libertarians reject America’s engagement in international organisations and alliances like NATO. Instead, they call for an isolationist „America First” politics. Like many other US libertarians, Rockwell and Rothbard were also convinced pacifists and rejected every military engagement by the US. War and the military were seen as means to expand state power ever further and to limit the freedoms of Americans and of people around the world.
Particularly hated is the American alliance with Israel. Anti-Semitic clichés often crop up here too. According to Rothbard, a powerful „Zionist lobby” was co-responsible for the Second Gulf War. In the same essay Rothbard also absurdly defended the historically revisionist thesis that Adolf Hitler had only wanted to regain territories Germany had lost in the First World War. The Nazis’ „Lebensraum” ideology goes entirely unmentioned. Rothbard probably did this in order to delegitimise America’s war against Nazi Germany, since the fight against the Axis powers is probably the most obvious example of a just war and would otherwise call Rothbard’s isolationism into question.
The paleo-libertarian aversion to Israel is still very current. Hans-Hermann Hoppe left the German Ludwig von Mises Institute (the American original is a paleo-libertarian think tank founded by Lew Rockwell, of which he is still a member), because Javier Milei was honoured there. Hoppe rejected the award also because, among other reasons, Javier Milei is too pro-Israel for him.
The paleo-libertarians also do not shy away from conservative collectivism. Hoppe holds only a strictly traditional and conformist way of life to be compatible with a libertarian society in his sense. Whoever is too hedonistic, holds too egalitarian views (supports democracy, say, or even communism), or does not live by a traditional family model, has to be excluded from society. Without these exclusions a paleo-libertarian society would supposedly fall apart. It is no surprise that it became part of the paleo strategy to deliberately seek closeness to right-wing extremists in order to build a broader right-populist base. So Rothbard expressed solidarity with the neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke when, supposedly reformed, he tried to find his footing again as a right-populist local politician.
The absurdity of the paleo-libertarians’ monarchist arguments should be clear to anyone who knows a little history or who follows current events in modern absolute monarchies. Historically, it is a false simplification to pretend that the state was simply the private property of the prince. Rather, complex social institutions existed over which no prince could rule without restriction. This system was no lean corporate structure ruled by a CEO. The subjects were, contrary to Hoppe’s claim, also not in solidarity with one another; rather, interest groups competed with the prince for economic privileges and special rights. The rule of princes was not the time of free markets and competition but of guilds, special interests, and trade monopolies.
Modern monarchies, too, are no libertarian paradises but mostly marked by corruption and the misallocation of resources through state planning. In the Gulf monarchies, billions in state money are regularly poured literally into the sand for failed mega-projects. In the case of autonomous anarcho-capitalist private cities, the question is why such small-state fragmentation would not lead to similar problems as we know them from German history. Protectionism, infringement on property, war and violence were no rarity in Germany before the nation state, and the smaller principalities were no haven of freedom either; they were particularly prone to witch hunts and similar mob mentalities.
Hoppe also finds no satisfactory answer to one of the strongest arguments of classical liberalism against the rule of princes and for democracy: the argument for internal peace. The paleo-libertarians constantly invoke Ludwig von Mises, but he was no anarchist nor monarchist; he was a liberal, and spoke out repeatedly and clearly for democracy as a form of government. In his 1927 book Liberalismus, Mises emphasises above all the value of democracy in enabling a peaceful change of government. Democracy is a means to avoid coups, civil wars, and other violence.
The collectivism of the paleo-libertarians is of course thoroughly illiberal. Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s conservative-traditional collectivism is similarly hard to follow. Why a traditional family should be needed to be part of a libertarian society is entirely illogical. It is not clear how a same-sex couple or a married couple in an open relationship represents a danger to the freedom of others. Hoppe is scarcely more consistent in his anger toward egalitarian ideas. For if the exclusion of democrats from his libertarian community is meant seriously, one could no longer publicly read the works of Ludwig von Mises with their pro-democratic statements.
Instead of the cultural diversity that liberal democracy has produced together with an open society, the result would be a violently imposed monoculture. Without universal rights there would no longer be a corrective when a particular society mistreated minorities and stripped them of rights. Anyone who makes a pact with neo-Nazis and the KKK cannot expect that, once the old order is overcome, a liberal new order will arise. Authoritarian movements are almost always specialised in the effective and centralised exercise of violence, and they aim at an authoritarian society.
As a form of government, friends of freedom are probably left only with liberal democracy. Democratic decisions are not automatically just or good for the common good. They are not necessarily liberal. But democracy gives every citizen the right to take part: to vote, to stand for election, to engage in parties, to count the vote, and to complain about the government. Liberal democracy provides a value order that gives the individual, his wishes and his dreams, a special place in society.
The liberal-democratic constitution of the state advances many further struggles for freedom. Civil freedoms like freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly have a high value in our society, precisely because we are a liberal democracy and these freedoms are indispensable for our republic. The democratic citizen is ideally a liberal human being; he questions, acts on his own responsibility, and respects his fellow human beings. Opposite him stands the subject, the prince’s servant, who does not question and does not resist but is ruled.
Should one therefore call this monarchism and collectivism paleo-libertarian, and thus libertarian at all? Murray Rothbard was called „Mr. Libertarian” and shaped the movement strongly; one can hardly imagine the history of libertarianism without him. With the authors he inspired, Hoppe and Yarvin, the tensions with the Enlightenment and the liberal principles libertarians mostly invoke become much clearer. Curtis Yarvin himself therefore suggested to paleo-libertarians that they simply reject the values of the Enlightenment and the American Revolution, since these had led to the modern state. With the rejection of the American Revolution and the Enlightenment, libertarianism as a self-description should also be dropped. Libertarianism stands too closely in connection with the revolution and its values. On this point, for once, one does not want to disagree with Curtis Yarvin. Whether one may see this as Rothbard’s heritage, however, is debatable.
