Moldbug's Corporate State Vs. A Christian Regime

A Qualified Rebuttal to Curtis Yarvin

When I began reading Mencius Moldbug in 2014, he had already been blogging for roughly seven years. It was suggested to me by my godfather to start with a “Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations,” followed by “An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives.” So that’s where I began. Honestly, I didn’t read much else of his work. Even back then his Atheism bothered me, but he did cite some great texts. It was really those works that helped inform my reactionary political view. I am grateful that Mr. Yarvin introduced me to works such as On Power by Bertrand De Juvenal, and Strictures Upon The Declaration of The Congress at Philadelphia by Thomas Hutchinson. He was in essence, a launching pad into a broader exploration of right wing reactionary thought, which has been quite fruitful. However, it is quite interesting that Yarvin said that there is no need to read Mein Kampf, nothing really of value to learn there. To clarify, I disagree with Hitler quite strongly on some points, but there are some fairly important points about the behavior of Curtis Yarvin’s kinsmen that perhaps he would prefer us to be left unaware. Anyways, evidently by the time I got around to reading Yarvin, his work was “more developed” I guess we shall say. He had coined the term Neoreaction, but that wasn’t his first idea for labelling his “movement.” Thank goodness he changed it, because the original name would not have caught on. Yarvin’s first post was entitled, “A Formalist Manifesto.” Don’t forget to post your #Formalism. There isn’t really anything worth responding to in that, other than it’s a stupid name and I’m glad he at least had the sense to change it later. In his second post however, he lays out the “case against Democracy.” He lists 10 blue pills, and 10 corresponding red pills. These terms seem to have been appropriated by other meanings, especially by the “manosphere.” So I’ll explain what they’ve always meant to the Dissident Right. It is a reference to the Matrix films, essentially if you are Blue pilled you are living in a false reality that has been crafted for you by the current regime, or as Moldbug calls it, “The Cathedral." The Red Pill however, is waking up to how things really are, peeling off the Progressive veil so to speak. I’ll save you half the trouble, and list his red pills here.

1. The rule of law is responsible for the present state of peace, prosperity and freedom in the US, Europe and Japan.

2. At best, democracy is sand in the gears of freedom and law. At worst it excludes them entirely, as in Iraq.

3. Fascism and communism are best understood as forms of democracy. The difference between single-party and multiparty democracy is like the difference between a malignant tumor and a benign one.

4. The state is just another giant corporation. Its actions generally advance its own interests. Sometimes these interests coincide with ours, sometimes they don’t.

5. Power in the West is held by the civil service, that is, the permanent employees of the state. In any struggle between the civil service and politicians or corporations, the civil service wins.

6. The state consists of all those whose interests are aligned with the state. This includes NGOs, universities, and the press, all of whose employees are effectively civil servants, and side with the civil service in almost all conflicts.

7. Right-wing politicians are a classic democratic phenomenon. Domestically, they have little power and are mostly harmless. Their international adventures are destructive, but they are inescapable consequences of democracy itself.

8. Democracy is politics. Any other definition is Orwellian. The absence of politics is the absence of democracy, and apolitical civil-service government is indeed better than democracy. But this is a low standard to surpass.

9. Western governments today are clones of the quasi-democratic FDR regime, whose best modern comparisons are leaders like Mubarak, Putin or Suharto. Its origin was the Progressive movement, which broke classical liberalism, then complained that it didn’t work.

10. Civil-service government works well at first, but it degrades. Its limit as time approaches infinity is sclerotic Brezhnevism. Its justification for ruling is inseparable from democracy, which is mystical nonsense and is rapidly disappearing. It cannot survive without a captive media and educational system, which the Internet will route around. Also, its financial system is a mess and could collapse at any minute. The whole thing will be lucky if it lasts another ten years.

I agree with most of these points. I suppose it’s one of those things in which the few points that you do disagree on are foundational, and pretty darn important. Without nit picking too much, I disagree with two. I’ll leave one as a mystery for now, as it will come up again with more reviews of Yarvin’s material. Remember when Donald Trump began his first campaign for President in 2015? Part of the appeal was when he said that we should “run government like a business.” As a criticizer of Democracy I understand the appeal. In my real job, I am a General Manager in an industry I won’t disclose. It’s 100% true that Democracy does not work in business. So would a government that functions like a business work better? It sure would be more efficient for better or for worse. Yarvin states that a government is basically just another corporation. He then goes on to spend a significant amount of time in his blog advocating for the government to be more like a Corporation, managed by a permanent CEO. Obviously the government in its current form, with its excess bureaucracy, different co-equal branches, and an electoral process, is not structured like a normal corporation. Curtis Yarvin wants it to be. Maybe that’s okay for him to want, because he’s an Atheist Jew. A Christian shouldn’t desire a soulless business to manage the affairs of society at large. The Christian State is ordained by God to govern the external life and order of society, in symphony with the Church, which regulates the internal life of man.